Week Fifteen: Malaria

Common Name: Malaria

Scientific Name: Plasmodium vivax

Not-So-Fun Fact: The plasmodium protist is the organism responsible for the infection known as malaria. Once a human host is infected with the disease via a mosquito bite, he or she may experience symptoms for the rest of their lives. Fortunately, the vegetable extract quinine acts as a preventative medication against infection.

Domain: Eukaryota

Kingdom: Protista

Phylum: Sporozoa

Class: Sporozoasida

Order: Eucoccidiorida

Family: Plasmodiidae

Genus: Plasmodium

Species: P. vivax

Environment: Plasmodium circulates throughout the body of a mosquito and is injected into a human host’s bloodstream by using the mosquito’s contaminated saliva as a vehicle. The protist inserts itself inside the host’s red blood cells and there wreaks havoc upon its host’s body. Malaria is most common in the tropics, especially sub-Saharan Africa.

Description: The Plasmodium vivax protist infects almost five hundred million people around the world and kills one million of its victims every year. The best defenses against catching malaria are sleeping under bed nets in areas at risk for the disease and taking quinine drugs regularly. Symptoms of malaria include fever, chills, fatigue, headache, sweating, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea.

Reproduction & Development: A mosquito must be infected by male and female Plasmodia to continue the life cycle of its resident parasite. Inside the insect’s body, the Plasmodia sexually reproduce. Their offspring make their way to the saliva of their host and are carried into a human bloodstream, where they asexually reproduce via binary fission and spread throughout the body. From here they attempt to circulate around the superficial blood vessels until they are picked up by new mosquitoes, mate, and begin the life cycle again.

Nutrition: Like its fellow members of phylum Sporozoa, Plasmodium is a parasitic heterotroph, which means that it feeds off of the tissues and bodily fluids of its host to survive and cannot make its own food. Plasmodium cannot perform photosynthesis.

Week Fourteen: Nettle

Common Name: Stinging Nettle

Scientific Name: Urtica  dioica

Not-So-Fun Fact: Stinging nettles are named for their agonizing properties. Simply brushing up against one of these plants releases a variety of acids that cause terrible pain akin to the a hundred tiny barbed needles being rammed forcefully into one small patch of skin. The author has personally been the victim of this particular plant while hiking and can state this as a first-hand account.

Domain: Eukaryota

Kingdom: Plantae

Phylum: Magnoliophyta

Class: Magnoliopsida

Order: Rosales

Family: Urticaceae

Genus: Urtica

Species: U. dioica

Description: The stinging nettle is perhaps the most well-known and well-hated of its family. It is an emerald green perennial herb that grows during the summer to a height of around three feet and blissfully dies back again each winter. The agent of the nettle’s painful poison is a series of almost invisible urticating hairs on the undersides of the leaves and on the stem of the plant. Each of these injects a cocktail of formic, oxalic, and tartaric acids. These compounds are found in bee and ant stings and bites, used by other irritating vegetables, and act as a muscle toxin, respectively.

Environment: Stinging nettles can be found in almost any habitat that supplies their preferred nutritional needs within the regions of the United States and northern Europe.

Reproduction & Development: As stated above, the nettle is a perennial plant that grows during the summer and dies back during the winter. It is also a flowering plant whose pale green blossoms form small clusters on the stem. The nettle reproduces either by self-pollination between male and female flowers or by sexual reproduction with others of its species. Once pollinated, a small fruit grows briefly around the seed before shriveling and allowing the seed to be blown off of its parent by the wind.

Nutrition: This nettle’s main condition for growth is an environment featuring moist soil. The author personally encountered the plant growing next to a small stream and surrounded by lushly growing grasses. It was likely also enjoying the contributions of the sheep roaming nearby, though we must not blame the lambs for the existence of the nettle. This plant requires sunlight and nutrients from the soil as well as water.

 

Week Thirteen: Foxglove

Common Name: Purple Foxglove, Witch's Gloves
Scientific Name: Digitalis purpurea

Actually Fun Fact (but only if your heart is failing): Foxglove, while extremely poisonous and irritating to most people, can be synthesized into the drug digitalis, which helps treat congestive heart failure by the same method the plant uses to damage healthy cardiovascular symptoms. Digitalis increases the strength of each heartbeat, which is dangerous and potentially deadly to most people but is helpful to patients with a weak heartbeat.

Domain: Eukaryota

Kingdom: Plantae

Phylum: Magnoliophyta

Class: Magnoliopsida

Order: Lamiales

Family: Scrophulariaceae

Genus: Digitalis

Species: D. purpurea

Description: Foxglove is a low-growing biennial prized for its beautiful towering branches of white and pale violet flowers, which sprout over rosettes of hairy ovoid leaves. This organism is highly poisonous, causing rashes and blisters if touched. Any part of the plant if ingested can cause stomachache, nausea, delirium, tremors, convulsions, headache, and disruption of the heart.

Environment: Foxglove is native to Europe, though it has been introduced to the Americas, especially the Pacific Northwest. Foxglove prefers rich loam soil but can survive in less nutritious earth as well and is often found in rocky terrain or even in crumbling stone walls. This organism generally favors shady woodland environments.

Reproduction & Development: Foxglove’s famed blossoms live for approximately six days after sprouting from two- to five-foot-tall green stems in the plant’s second year of life. After this final second year, the plant dies, but not before being pollinated and producing new seeds for offspring.

Nutrition: Foxglove is a vascular plant and draws nutrients and water from the soil in which it grows. The leaves of the plant perform photosynthesis and draw energy from the sun.

 

Week Twelve: Nightshade

Common Name: Deadly Nightshade, Belladonna, Devil's Cherry
Scientific Name: Atropa belladonna

Not-So-Fun Fact: All parts of the nightshade plant contain the poison alkaloid atropine and the organism has been known to be deadly since ancient times. The genus name, Atropa, stems from the ancient Greek belief in three goddesses, or Fates, who controlled all human destiny by spinning the thread of life. The goddess Atropos was the Fate whose duty it was to cut the thread of life and therefore bring death to her subject.

Domain: Eukaryota

Kingdom: Plantae

Phylum: Magnoliophyta

Class: Magnoliopsida

Order: Solanales

Family: Solanaceae

Genus: Atropa

Species: A. belladonna

Description: Belladonna is a perennial herb that grows to about three feet in height and sprouts pointed ovoid leaves. Even the leaves and stems of the plant produce pus-filled blisters on the skin if touched, and ingestion of the shining, swollen black berries is almost always fatal, though in very small quantities the victim survives the agonizing effects. Symptoms of belladonna poisoning include dilation of the pupils, increased heartbeat, confusion, hallucinations, seizures, and death.

Environment: Belladonna is found over most of Europe, Asia, and North America. European settlers arriving in the Americas were at first distrustful of the similar-looking but fortunately harmless tomato, a fellow member of the Solanaceae family. Belladonna prefers shady, perennially damp plots in which to grow.

Reproduction & Development: Belladonna reproduces sexually. In the spring, purple-brown flowers similar to those of a petunia bloom. Over the summer, small, hard green berries engorge and become bright red, finally fading to black by autumn.

Nutrition: Like all vascular plants, belladonna requires water from the soil and uses photosynthesis to produce energy in its leaves from the sun.