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Pinedrops

Dave Powell, USDA Forest Service, Bugwood.org

7/6/14 & 7/7/14: This week on Fieldnotes: "Pinedrops," by Peter Lesica, read by Anne Garde.

"All of our conifers form a symbiotic partnership with certain soil fungi. The fungus helps the tree get minerals and in return receives energy-rich carbohydrates. Pinedrops (Pterospora andromedea) insinuates itself into this partnership by taking some of those carbohydrates from the fungus.

However, pinedrops is not a freeloader; it passes along a growth stimulant to the mycorrhizal fungus. Radioactive phosphorus injected into pinedrops appears later in adjacent trees. That's why pinedrops is found only near conifers. In this three-way mutualism, everybody wins." 

Beth Anne Austein has been spinning tunes on the air (The Folk Show, Dancing With Tradition, Freeforms), as well as recording, editing and mixing audio for Montana Public Radio and Montana PBS, since the Clinton Administration. She’s jockeyed faders or "fixed it in post” for The Plant Detective; Listeners Bookstall; Fieldnotes; Musicians Spotlight; The Write Question; Storycorps; Selected Shorts; Bill Raoul’s music series; orchestral and chamber concerts; lecture series; news interviews; and outside producers’ programs about topics ranging from philosophy to ticks.
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