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Post by stephan on Oct 8, 2020 9:15:59 GMT -5
Bamboo is loaded with silica. What's with that. So are rice and horsetail, which is related to several interesting facts: 1. In the lab, if you are studying the genomes of these plants, makes it challenging to extract DNA. DNA adsorbs to silica (most modern DNA extraction kits are based on that fact). 2. If rice straw burns, it creates more particulate pollution than some other plants. Decades ago, California used to have nasty air problems when the rice farmers burned their fields after harvest. 3. Boiled and dried horsetail is used as a fine abrasive (finer than any available sandpaper) as a finishing polish in woodwork because of the silicates coating the stems.
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jamesp
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Post by jamesp on Oct 8, 2020 10:44:13 GMT -5
Bamboo is loaded with silica. What's with that. So are rice and horsetail, which is related to several interesting facts: 1. In the lab, if you are studying the genomes of these plants, makes it challenging to extract DNA. DNA adsorbs to silica (most modern DNA extraction kits are based on that fact). 2. If rice straw burns, it creates more particulate pollution than some other plants. Decades ago, California used to have nasty air problems when the rice farmers burned their fields after harvest. 3. Boiled and dried horsetail is used as a fine abrasive (finer than any available sandpaper) as a finishing polish in woodwork because of the silicates coating the stems. That is interesting stephan. Silica continues to fascinate. Do you do lab type work ? In the south horsetail is referred to as scouring rush. It was used to scrub/clean cookware. The old timers were aware of the abrasive nature of this plant. I never knew burning a silica rich plant could create a related pollution. I have grown bamboo for decades on my farm. I may have about 3 acres planted in 30 different varieties. We are constantly burning piles generated by cutting it down to keep it in check. Neighbors used to call the police because of the gun shot like sounds the canes generated when the exploded. Ours is all Phyllostachys family, running bamboo. One variety(Rubromarginata, Alabama experiment station)) has been reported to create more biological mass than any plant on earth. This bamboo likes silica rich soils and clays. Our clay just happens to hold the right amount of water to allow it to be very happy and promotes it growing very aggressively. Seems like these plant silicas are referred to as opaline silica ?
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Post by Bob on Oct 8, 2020 11:12:06 GMT -5
Usually mammals that consume such plants have to have teeth that never stop growing or else suffer severe dental wear. I have seen horsetail browsed down to only 6" on a lot of hiking trips. I'm going to guess that moose or deer or elk are doing it, but it sure doesn't look like a very nutrient rich plant stem. I don't know what the dental consequences are. Chewing a silica laden mouthful of plant would be similar I guess to use sprinkling a bit of quartz dust in our salad.
In grad school, some friends and I bundled some horsetail together and made a brush and then checked to see if it can scour. Actually, not only did it work but I remember one person saying it left far more fine scratches in a new pot than they wanted and they wished they had not been quite so vigorous.
Googling "panda silica dentition" leads to a whole lot of fascinating information about what this creature has to deal with in trying to masticate and digest this silica laden plant.
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Post by stephan on Oct 8, 2020 14:59:40 GMT -5
So are rice and horsetail, which is related to several interesting facts: 1. In the lab, if you are studying the genomes of these plants, makes it challenging to extract DNA. DNA adsorbs to silica (most modern DNA extraction kits are based on that fact). 2. If rice straw burns, it creates more particulate pollution than some other plants. Decades ago, California used to have nasty air problems when the rice farmers burned their fields after harvest. 3. Boiled and dried horsetail is used as a fine abrasive (finer than any available sandpaper) as a finishing polish in woodwork because of the silicates coating the stems. That is interesting stephan . Silica continues to fascinate. Do you do lab type work ? In the south horsetail is referred to as scouring rush. It was used to scrub/clean cookware. The old timers were aware of the abrasive nature of this plant. I never knew burning a silica rich plant could create a related pollution. I have grown bamboo for decades on my farm. I may have about 3 acres planted in 30 different varieties. We are constantly burning piles generated by cutting it down to keep it in check. Neighbors used to call the police because of the gun shot like sounds the canes generated when the exploded. Ours is all Phyllostachys family, running bamboo. One variety(Rubromarginata, Alabama experiment station)) has been reported to create more biological mass than any plant on earth. This bamboo likes silica rich soils and clays. Our clay just happens to hold the right amount of water to allow it to be very happy and promotes it growing very aggressively. Seems like these plant silicas are referred to as opaline silica ? I no longer do bench work. I am now a safety engineer, so my focus is waste management, industrial hygiene, hazard communication and that sort of thing. Needless to say, the three-fer of a pandemic, a nasty heat wave and apocalyptic wildfires have kept me busy these last months.... I'm not sure how burning bamboo compares with rice straw in terms of PM2.5 pollution. Even if it's similar, though, there is a major difference between the inland areas of the West Coast and the South. You get rain. We get maybe 2-4 months of it year, and it has definitely decreased in the last 30 years. It used to be that you could count on it starting in October or November. Now, sometimes we only get January and February, so the pollution stays airborne. This is particularly true if we get inversion layers, meaning no coastal breezes. If we do get winds, it's nice for us, in the Northern part of the Central Valley, but really sucks for those in the Southern part, because it blows everything there. If you look at the fire-related maps on AirNow, the region around Fresno still has bad smoke pollution from the fires, whereas we are actually doing much better. I had not heard the term opaline silica, as it relates to plants. I've always heard "biogenic." However, if it is amorphous, it makes sense.
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Post by stephan on Oct 8, 2020 15:01:35 GMT -5
Usually mammals that consume such plants have to have teeth that never stop growing or else suffer severe dental wear. I have seen horsetail browsed down to only 6" on a lot of hiking trips. I'm going to guess that moose or deer or elk are doing it, but it sure doesn't look like a very nutrient rich plant stem. I don't know what the dental consequences are. Chewing a silica laden mouthful of plant would be similar I guess to use sprinkling a bit of quartz dust in our salad. In grad school, some friends and I bundled some horsetail together and made a brush and then checked to see if it can scour. Actually, not only did it work but I remember one person saying it left far more fine scratches in a new pot than they wanted and they wished they had not been quite so vigorous. Googling "panda silica dentition" leads to a whole lot of fascinating information about what this creature has to deal with in trying to masticate and digest this silica laden plant. I can't imagine it's nutrient-dense either. Maybe we'll see some horsetail remains in a coprolite post soon (hint, hint RWA3006).
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Post by Mel on Oct 8, 2020 15:49:39 GMT -5
Maybe down the line I can pick up some BSic and try it out. Diamonds are not this girls best friend...unless they can be reused as grit! The diamond comment tickled me. They always seemed over rated and (ha ha) transparent. I always found it amusing that the same thing used to drill holes in rock was such a status symbol. My brother worked up at a diamond mine in the arctic circle and the only thing he could say positively about them was Debeers has a hell of a marketing team. As for the silica discussion, I came here for fun, and I'm leaving smarter. This feels like school.... I'm off to get more educated.
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RWA3006
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Post by RWA3006 on Oct 8, 2020 17:34:49 GMT -5
Usually mammals that consume such plants have to have teeth that never stop growing or else suffer severe dental wear. I have seen horsetail browsed down to only 6" on a lot of hiking trips. I'm going to guess that moose or deer or elk are doing it, but it sure doesn't look like a very nutrient rich plant stem. I don't know what the dental consequences are. Chewing a silica laden mouthful of plant would be similar I guess to use sprinkling a bit of quartz dust in our salad. In grad school, some friends and I bundled some horsetail together and made a brush and then checked to see if it can scour. Actually, not only did it work but I remember one person saying it left far more fine scratches in a new pot than they wanted and they wished they had not been quite so vigorous. Googling "panda silica dentition" leads to a whole lot of fascinating information about what this creature has to deal with in trying to masticate and digest this silica laden plant. I can't imagine it's nutrient-dense either. Maybe we'll see some horsetail remains in a coprolite post soon (hint, hint RWA3006). Thanks for putting this on my radar. I happen to have a patch of horsetail growing on the creek bank right behind my house. I think I'll pull some and compare with some coprolite slabs and see what's up. Never looked for it in coprolite before and according to what I've read it was common back when the dinos where around so it reasons it ought to be something I should target. I remember when I was a kid it was common knowledge in my circle that frontier people, pioneers used horsetail for scouring pots, pans and dutch ovens. I later learned it was like some bamboo, high in silica and it was obvious in handling it. I've actually used it to scrub dutch ovens when I was a newlywed living off the grid in middle of nowhere, Wyoming four decades ago. Kids often made necklaces out of it. I grew up on a ranch raising livestock and I never observed any grazing on horsetail. Same goes for ungulates in my professional hunting career but I wouldn't be surprised if something did it though. It would be poor nutrition and a ruminant would have the best chance of deriving energy from it, but I can't imagine anything domestic or wild wanting to rechew a bolus of that stuff. Strange world we live in.
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Post by stephan on Oct 8, 2020 17:44:42 GMT -5
I can't imagine it's nutrient-dense either. Maybe we'll see some horsetail remains in a coprolite post soon (hint, hint RWA3006 ). Thanks for putting this on my radar. I happen to have a patch of horsetail growing on the creek bank right behind my house. I think I'll pull some and compare with some coprolite slabs and see what's up. Never looked for it in coprolite before and according to what I've read it was common back when the dinos where around so it reasons it ought to be something I should target. I remember when I was a kid it was common knowledge in my circle that frontier people, pioneers used horsetail for scouring pots, pans and dutch ovens. I later learned it was like some bamboo, high in silica and it was obvious in handling it. I've actually used it to scrub dutch ovens when I was a newlywed living off the grid in middle of nowhere, Wyoming four decades ago. Kids often made necklaces out of it. I grew up on a ranch raising livestock and I never observed any grazing on horsetail. Same goes for ungulates in my professional hunting career but I wouldn't be surprised if something did it though. It would be poor nutrition and a ruminant would have the best chance of deriving energy from it, but I can't imagine anything domestic or wild wanting to rechew a bolus of that stuff. Strange world we live in. You're welcome for the radar-item. Thought of you immediately, and figured if pine branches are on the diet, why not horsetail? Not great nutrition, but probably no worse than straight-up wood.
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RWA3006
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Post by RWA3006 on Oct 8, 2020 18:00:49 GMT -5
Thanks for putting this on my radar. I happen to have a patch of horsetail growing on the creek bank right behind my house. I think I'll pull some and compare with some coprolite slabs and see what's up. Never looked for it in coprolite before and according to what I've read it was common back when the dinos where around so it reasons it ought to be something I should target. I remember when I was a kid it was common knowledge in my circle that frontier people, pioneers used horsetail for scouring pots, pans and dutch ovens. I later learned it was like some bamboo, high in silica and it was obvious in handling it. I've actually used it to scrub dutch ovens when I was a newlywed living off the grid in middle of nowhere, Wyoming four decades ago. Kids often made necklaces out of it. I grew up on a ranch raising livestock and I never observed any grazing on horsetail. Same goes for ungulates in my professional hunting career but I wouldn't be surprised if something did it though. It would be poor nutrition and a ruminant would have the best chance of deriving energy from it, but I can't imagine anything domestic or wild wanting to rechew a bolus of that stuff. Strange world we live in. You're welcome for the radar-item. Thought of you immediately, and figured if pine branches are on the diet, why not horsetail? Not great nutrition, but probably no worse than straight-up wood. Makes perfect sense. A while back I read a master's thesis on coprolite in southern Utah documenting that part of the diet of some hadrosaurs included dead semi decayed wood ... rotten logs. Crustacean shells were mixed in with the wood and it was hypothesized that the critters were living in or on the wood, probably burrowing inside the rotten cavities. I have a hunch if the beasts were willing to eat this kind of wood they wouldn't have a problem eating horsetail. I imagine the main challenge would be how to get mouthfuls of it to be worthwhile and maybe its consumption would be incidental to larger pieces on the buffet. I think I derailed the thread. Sorry
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Post by stephan on Oct 8, 2020 18:11:28 GMT -5
You're welcome for the radar-item. Thought of you immediately, and figured if pine branches are on the diet, why not horsetail? Not great nutrition, but probably no worse than straight-up wood. Makes perfect sense. A while back I read a master's thesis on coprolite in southern Utah documenting that part of the diet of some hadrosaurs included dead semi decayed wood ... rotten logs. Crustacean shells were mixed in with the wood and it was hypothesized that the critters were living in or on the wood, probably burrowing inside the rotten cavities. I have a hunch if the beasts were willing to eat this kind of wood they wouldn't have a problem eating horsetail. I imagine the main challenge would be how to get mouthfuls of it to be worthwhile and maybe its consumption would be incidental to larger pieces on the buffet. I think I derailed the thread. Sorry Not derailed at all, IMHO (at least not any worse than it already was). Learning stuff, and it seems like a natural progression of the thread. And if someone tumbles a few coprolite chunks, it's full circle. The crustacean shells might have done double duty. Acting like gastroliths in a bird's crop, plus a little bump of protein contained within.
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gemfeller
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Post by gemfeller on Oct 8, 2020 19:25:44 GMT -5
Coming at this from a different perspective, a variety of opal actually forms in bamboo plants. It's called tabashir. In Myanmar (Burma) sections of bamboo wood are sometimes used as laps to bring jadeite to a fine polish due to their natural silica abrasive.
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Post by Bob on Oct 8, 2020 21:04:48 GMT -5
There is a chance the grazed horsetail I've seen was only on Isle Royale. The moose are nearing a population crash, have over grazed their favored balsam fir (a terrible diet to begin with but they have no choice) and are desperate and eating almost anything to survive. New wolves have been brought in to help the situation. A mature horsetail stem looks about as appetizing as shoe leather to me.
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jamesp
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Post by jamesp on Oct 9, 2020 7:29:38 GMT -5
Consider pandas eating bamboo Bob. They devour great quantities of it. It is low in nutrients. The Atlanta zoo has a crew that grows and harvests the large amount of bamboo required to keep the pandas fed. The US really only has one native, a spindly unattractive arundinaria bamboo that the pandas prefer over dozens of other imported varieties.
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jamesp
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Post by jamesp on Oct 9, 2020 7:53:02 GMT -5
Coming at this from a different perspective, a variety of opal actually forms in bamboo plants. It's called tabashir. In Myanmar (Burma) sections of bamboo wood are sometimes used as laps to bring jadeite to a fine polish due to their natural silica abrasive. Amazing gemfeller. The bamboo industry is booming due to the demand for flooring. A hardness scale similar to the Mohs scale has been developed to grade the wear durability of bamboo and other wood flooring. See 'janka hardness scale'. Side note, granted bamboo is probably the hardest wood, it also has a super high coefficient of expansion which can cause expansion problems when used as flooring. Anyway, bamboo butcher blocks might make a fine polishing disc if a wheel of it was turned on a lathe for mounting on a lapidary buffing machine.
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jamesp
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Post by jamesp on Oct 9, 2020 8:00:23 GMT -5
You're welcome for the radar-item. Thought of you immediately, and figured if pine branches are on the diet, why not horsetail? Not great nutrition, but probably no worse than straight-up wood. Makes perfect sense. A while back I read a master's thesis on coprolite in southern Utah documenting that part of the diet of some hadrosaurs included dead semi decayed wood ... rotten logs. Crustacean shells were mixed in with the wood and it was hypothesized that the critters were living in or on the wood, probably burrowing inside the rotten cavities. I have a hunch if the beasts were willing to eat this kind of wood they wouldn't have a problem eating horsetail. I imagine the main challenge would be how to get mouthfuls of it to be worthwhile and maybe its consumption would be incidental to larger pieces on the buffet. I think I derailed the thread. Sorry We collect horsetail fossils in Birmingham area of Alabama RWA3006. It is common to find trunk sections of horsetail over 10 inches in diameter. The plant was tree sized back then ! Makes one curious as to the size of bamboo back then... I believe this bamboo is native to NW South America. I have seen it in Peru.:
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Post by stephan on Oct 9, 2020 8:10:03 GMT -5
You can see a bamboo forest like this on Maui too. 200’ tall. Pretty amazing that it’s botanically a grass. That’s one heck of a lawn!
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RWA3006
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Post by RWA3006 on Oct 9, 2020 8:11:21 GMT -5
jamesp any idea how far back bamboo has been found in the fossil record?
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jamesp
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Post by jamesp on Oct 9, 2020 9:03:57 GMT -5
The diamond comment tickled me. They always seemed over rated and (ha ha) transparent. I always found it amusing that the same thing used to drill holes in rock was such a status symbol. My brother worked up at a diamond mine in the arctic circle and the only thing he could say positively about them was Debeers has a hell of a marketing team. As for the silica discussion, I came here for fun, and I'm leaving smarter. This feels like school.... I'm off to get more educated. Never a shortage of interesting and educational discussions on this forum. It is a big help for a rock collector to understand the geology of his collecting area for instance. If it takes education to find treasures then why not educate yourself ! One such educational tidbits that I learned was that a nice gemmy petrified coral can be found at an ancient ocean at 90 feet above sea level. well, the rock collecting journals never mentioned this. Any waterway in north central Florida that removes sand and topsoil from 70 to 90 feet above present sea level will yield petrified coral will yield this coral in my experience. I don't think anyone knows this. It opened my collecting areas to a broad range and mixed variety of material that no collector has picked over go figure.
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jamesp
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Post by jamesp on Oct 9, 2020 9:06:49 GMT -5
jamesp any idea how far back bamboo has been found in the fossil record? I do not know this RWA3006. I do want to research this. I know there is about 6 varieties of native palm trees presently in the US. In Texas alone over 400 fossil varieties of palm have been found. A very diverse world back in those days.
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RWA3006
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Post by RWA3006 on Oct 9, 2020 10:37:14 GMT -5
jamesp any idea how far back bamboo has been found in the fossil record? I do not know this RWA3006. I do want to research this. I know there is about 6 varieties of native palm trees presently in the US. In Texas alone over 400 fossil varieties of palm have been found. A very diverse world back in those days. I've found a fair amount of pet palm in Wyoming at 6800' elevation and average of only 60ish frost free days per year. The world has changed in numerous ways ... latitudes, elevations, glaciation, etc. It would have been interesting to see a perfect replay of what transpired.
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