Aconite

Aconite, common name for certain perennial herbs and for a preparation derived from them that was formerly used in medicine. More than 100 species belong to the aconite genus and are native to temperate regions of the northern hemisphere. Several species, including the helmet flower, a well-known European species, are cultivated as garden plants in the United States. The common aconites have fibrous or tuberous roots, mostly erect stems, and palmately divided or cleft leaves. The flowers in most species are blue or purple, although some species have yellow or white flowers. The outer, showy parts of the bilaterally symmetrical flower are five in number, and the uppermost is shaped like a large, downward-opening hood. Because of this hood, which immediately distinguishes aconite from larkspur, aconites are commonly called monkshood. They are also known as wolfsbane.

Aconites contain highly active alkaloids, especially aconitine, and are poisonous to both humans and animals. The helmet flower has long been considered one of the most dangerous plants of Europe. When eaten in small to moderate amounts, roots produce symptoms of restlessness, salivation, nausea, a weakened and irregular heartbeat, chest pain, prostration, and frequently death within hours.

Scientific classification: Aconites belong to the family Ranunculaceae. The helmet flower is classified as Aconitum napellus.

Cultivated as garden plants in the United States, helmet flowers bloom a brilliant indigo blue in late summer. Long considered dangerous in Europe, helmet flowers are poisonous to humans and if eaten may cause nausea, irregular heartbeat, or death.

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IMPORTANCE OF LICHENS

Lichens are common food for insects and slugs. In the arctic tundra, reindeer and caribou rely on lichens during the winter, when no other food is available. Several species of lichens that sprout up through the snow are called reindeer mosses.

Humans rarely eat lichens except in cases where no other food is available. The Bible may chronicle one such example: Some scholars believe that the manna or bread that the ancient Israelites ate in the desert when they fled Egypt was made of lichen. In Japan, where algae as well as fungi are prized foods, certain lichens are eaten as delicacies.

Although lichens have been used in folk medicine as purported cures for many ills, from headaches and toothaches to tuberculosis, diabetes, and asthma, their use in modern medicine is recent. The discovery in the 1940s that some fungi produce potent antibiotics stimulated an extensive screening of fungi and lichens. Since then, lichen extracts have found limited use in Europe, where lichen antibiotics have been used to treat tuberculosis and some skin diseases.

Lichen extracts are also used to add color or scent. Many lichens have earthy red, brown, russet, and blue pigments, and these pigments have been used as clothing dyes since the time of ancient Greece. Native Americans use boiled lichen extracts to dye cloth and baskets. Even the famous Harris tweeds, woolen textiles from the Scottish islands, are still dyed with Scottish lichens. A number of dark, oily extracts from European and African lichens are used to add scents to soaps and perfumes.

Lichens are used as living indicators of environmental problems because of their sensitivity to atmospheric pollution. Despite their hardiness in severe conditions, many lichens are damaged by the chemicals found in polluted air and by acid rain produced from the burning of coal, oil, and gasoline, and other industrial processes. Comparisons of lichen damage from industrialized and nonindustrialized areas provide an index of air pollution. Studies spanning the past 50 years have found that the variety and number of lichens have declined in many industrialized cities in both Europe and North America. Fortunately, studies have shown that when a pollution source is shut down, lichens can make a comeback, providing hope for their long-term survival.

GROWTH AND REPRODUCTION OF LICHENS

Lichens lack roots, but they are usually firmly attached to the surfaces where they grow by hyphae. Lichens grow excruciatingly slowly, adding a few millimeters to their length or diameter in a year. The fastest growing varieties may add no more than 30 mm (1.2 in) to their length in a year. Lichens may have long life spans—a lichen found in West Greenland in the Arctic is more than 4,500 years old. Scientists have used the sizes of large specimens to estimate how long it has been since glaciers covered arctic and mountain areas. 

During prolonged dry periods, lichens survive by retaining a small amount of water and reducing their growth and metabolic processes to the barest survival levels. After a rain, the fungal partner is able to soak up water like a sponge, absorbing two to three times its weight in water. A moist internal environment is critical for the alga, which needs water, along with carbon dioxide and sunlight, to manufacture food through photosynthesis. During dry periods when other food may be lacking, the fungus benefits by absorbing sugars and nitrogen-rich compounds produced by the alga during photosynthesis. In some cases the fungal partner is parasitic, using special fungal hyphae called haustoria to penetrate the algal cell and absorb nourishment. Since the fungal partner usually does not kill the alga, some scientists call this relationship a controlled parasitism of the alga by the fungus.

In lichen reproduction, the fungus undergoes sexual reproduction and the alga undergoes asexual reproduction, each independently of its partner. In the fungus, the hyphae contains two mating strains, called plus and minus strains because there are no anatomical distinctions between them. The nuclei from these two mating strains fuse within a special, multicellular reproductive structure on the surface of the lichen. The fused nuclei divide several times and produce spores, which are carried away by the wind and may germinate to form a new mass of hyphae. These new fungal hyphae are free of algae and typically must link with an alga in order to survive. The algal cells within the lichen reproduce through mitosis, a process in which a single cell divides into two genetically identical cells.

Lichens as a unit may also undergo asexual reproduction. The lichen may slough off small clumps of soredia, intertwined fungal hyphae with a few algal cells, which disperse to new habitats. Alternatively, the lichen may produce small, fingerlike buds on the surface called isidia, which break off and form new lichens.

STRUCTURE OF LICHENS

About 18,000 to 20,000 species of lichens have been identified. Scientists typically classify lichens based on the fungal partner, and the lichen name is the same as the scientific name of the fungal partner. By far the most common fungi found in lichens are sac fungi, or ascomycetes, which produce reproductive spores in special cells shaped like sacs. In about two dozen tropical lichens, the fungal component is a club fungus, or basidiomycete. The club fungi, which include common mushrooms and toadstools, produce their reproductive spores in special cells that are shaped like clubs. 

The algal partner of a lichen is usually composed of green algae in the form of single cells or chains of cells. Green algae contain chlorophyll, the primary light-absorbing pigment necessary for photosynthesis. This pigment is housed in saclike structures called chloroplasts, the sites of photosynthesis. In some dark-colored, gelatinous lichens, cyanobacteria (also known as blue-green algae) are the algal component. Usually a lichen contains a single species of algae, but in a few cases both a green alga and a cyanobacterium live in different parts of the same lichen.

A typical lichen has a three-layered structure. A middle layer containing algal cells entwined in fungal hyphae is sandwiched between two layers of fungal tissue. This three-layered structure is arranged into one of three basic growth forms. Crustose lichens grow as flattened crusts with the bottom layer cemented to the surface of a rock or tree bark. Foliose lichens have a leaflike appearance, with a distinct upper and lower surface exposed to the air. Foliose lichens often form large, flaky patches on tree trunks. Fruticose lichens grow in hairlike, shrubby strands on the ground or hanging from tree branches. Each strand is tubular, with the typical three-layered structure surrounding a hollow core. A common fruticose lichen is old man’s beard, which hangs in wispy clumps from tree limbs and resembles moss.