6/11/2023 0 Comments Witch on a broom![]() Writing in the 16th century, the Spanish court physician Andrés de Laguna claimed to have taken "a pot full of a certain green ointment … composed of herbs such as hemlock, nightshade, henbane, and mandrake" from the home of a couple accused of witchcraft. Forbes's David Kroll notes that there are also hallucinogenic chemicals in Atropa belladonna (deadly nightshade), Hyoscyamus niger (henbane), Mandragora officinarum (mandrake), and Datura stramonium (jimsonweed). And they experimented with other plants, as well. So people, as people are wont to do, adapted this knowledge, figuring out ways to tame ergot, essentially, for hallucinatory purposes. Photo credits: header, Pexels public domain cover, Julian Paren CC-BY-SA-2.A 17th-century wood engraving of a "witch" being prepared for "flight" (Wellcome Institute, London, via John Mann) Pereira Lima Teixeira et al 2015 – Time for Chocolate: Current Understanding and New Perspectives on Cacao Witches’ Broom Disease Research University of Maryland Extension – Witches Broom on Trees I have an update on our black walnut adventure if you'd like to check it out!Īmerican Conifer Society – What is a Witch’s Broom to attend our next Biophilia: Pittsburgh meeting. Depending on the tree and the pathogen, you may even notice a bit of withering on the branch holding the "broom."Ĭontinue the Conversation: Share your nature discoveries with our community by posting to Twitter and Instagram with hashtag #bioPGH, and R.S.V.P. The next time you're out on a hike, keep an eye out for a mass of branches that doesn't seem to have been assembled by a squirrel. ![]() I’d call that witch’s broom fungus a little goblin! Imagine a chocolate shortage on Halloween.now that is the stuff of nightmares!Ĭonnecting to the Outdoors Tip:Witch's broom can occur on a wide variety of native Pennsylvania trees, both evergreen and deciduous. perniciosa first moves into the living plant tissue and makes itself at home until the tissue dies…and the fugus proceeds to feed off of it. One of the biggest causes of cacao crop loss, M. If you want to hear a really scary tidbit, though, witch’s broom is a notorious nemesis of Theobroma cacao - chocolate trees! In this case, the witch’s broom is caused by the fungus Moniliophthora perniciosa, and it truly is a problem. They can actually be ecologically beneficial as birds and squirrels use them for nesting. In some cases, witch’s brooms seem to divert nutrients and thus be detrimental to plant but in other cases, the masses don’t seem to be a problem for the tree. Then, through a process that involves hijacking plant growth hormones, the pathogen induces unusual plant growth in a variety of directions - hence twigs and branches growing every which way around the mass of infection. How can these different infections all cause twisted masses of branches? It’s a little physiologically complicated, but essentially, the pathogen (whether a virus, bacteria, fungus, etc.) will interrupt a normal point of growth, like at a bud. Viruses and mutations within plant cells themselves can also lead to witch’s brooms. ![]() For example, two different kinds of fungi can cause witch’s brooms on cherry trees, mites can do the same to hackberry trees, and phytoplasms (a group of bacteria that only attack plant vascular tissue) can create gnarly masses on a variety of a trees. ![]() Witch’s brooms can occur on a number of different species of tree and shrubs, and a variety of different pathogens can cause them. ![]() But what causes the mass? And are they are a problem for the plant? Pull up a toadstool and let’s chat by cauldron! These “brooms,” are named as such because they look like they belong to a spooky witch, of course. “Witch’s broom” is a generic term for a plant condition that looks like a mass of tangled, twisted twigs and small branches clumped on a tree branch. Perhaps we won’t see witches actually flying on brooms this weekend, but you’re very likely to see a witch’s broom on a walk in the woods. The Weird Sisters, Macbeth When the wood gnarls and twists, A resource of Biophilia: Pittsburgh, #bioPGH is a weekly blog and social media series that aims to encourage both children and adults to reconnect with nature and enjoy what each of our distinctive seasons has to offer. ![]()
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