Candidatus Phytoplasma pini, it makes brooms for the witches

It is neither a virus nor a bacterium, but it has characteristics of both microorganisms. It would be because an intermediate step, a link in the evolution. It cannot live on independent way since the bacteria do but necessarily it needs to live within the cytoplasm of a vegetal cell, because it lacks independent cellular membrane and metabolic and reproductive system and takes advantage enzymes and the organules of the vegetal cell to survive and to be perpetuated. It is a special plasmid more evolved and different from the plasmids that parasitize the bacterias and leavenings, adapted to the parasitization of the cells of the coniferous of the Pinus sort.

 Broom of sorceresses or Graft of sorceresses on a Pinus halepensis in an immense forest of Jimena de la Frontera in Cadiz. These malformations, true plant tumors, are caused by the infection by the plasmid Candidatus Phytoplasma pini.

Until not long ago the ignorance was so great on this strange microorganism that not even had binomial scientific name like the rest of alive beings of the Earth. The international scientific community in the end has agreed itself and it has given a name to it formed by three words, Candidatus Phytoplasma pini. The Candidatus word is applied in front of the scientific name to indicate that it is a microorganism perfectly characterized and studied but impossible to cultivate, since always lives inside cells and it cannot be isolated. 

Same broom of sorceresses previous seen from more close.

Structure of the ramifications of previous broom of sorceresses. The plasmid brings about a dwarfing growth shortening the branches that grow crowded together, so that those that are inside the broom are dried for want of light. Due to the maze that forms they cannot fall and they exaggeratedly increase the weight of the ill branch, being able to get to break itself and to fall. Needles also grows much more short and pineapples are completely normal but much more small, like their seeds, which in spite of the parasitization are perfectly viable. 

These vegetal plasmids or phytoplasmas cannot be seen nor be isolated like individual beings, it is only possible to see and to analyze the effects of its parasitization on the plants. They cannot either disperse by themselves of active way, but they need a vector to infect the plants and to propagate. For it insects, acaruses, nematodes, birds, etc use… that transmit the plasmid of plant to plant by means of the tiny ones hurt which they cause to the plants when feeding on them. The contagion also can cause it the man through contaminated tools, like for example scissors to prune, hand saws, power saws, axes, etc… And finally an ill tree can propagate the infection through rubbing of its branches with the branches of the neighboring trees.

Graft of sorceresses or Broom of sorceresses completely spherical on a Pinus halepensis of the ancient Arab village of Castellitx, pertaining to the municipality of Algaida located in center of the Island of Majorca.

Another Broom of sorceresses very compact in the same Majorcan village of Castellitx in the end of one long branch of a Pinus halepensis.

Near image of the previous ill branch. It clearly has a very healthful aspect with needles of an alive green color and numerous pineapples.

The scientists, to know if a branch is ill, must analyze their cells using sophisticated methods of genetic engeneering, as it is the PCR (polymerase chain reaction), through which are able to isolate and to identify some specific genes of this plasmid, like the gene 16S rRNA. 

Broom of sorceresses on Pinus canariensis of the canary municipality of Santiago del Teide located in the South end of the Island of Tenerife.

The plasmid Candidatus Phytoplasma pini, once has been able to penetrate in the cells of the phloem of a sensible tree, it integrates its genome in the nucleus of the parasitized vegetal cell, so that the infected cell happens to be controlled by the DNA of the plasmid. So it is the degree of nuclear integration that the pinions produced by the small pineapples of broom of sorceresses, if they are seeded, germinate without problems but the growth of small plant is very slow and after enough years it becomes a dwarfed pine, a true natural Bonsai. It is possible that throughout million years of parasitization of some plants by virus or plasmids new species have formed that at the moment have already the stable good genome with a total integration of the DNA of the guest and the parasite.

 

Young Aleppo pine, parasited in its entirety by the Candidatus Phytoplasma pini in a forest of pine, mastic and olive in Majorcan municipality of Bunyola.

With the advances more and more sophisticated of the study of the genome surely there will be many surprises and they are very probable that the viral or plasmidic origin of a great number of species and subspecies, as much animal as vegetal or bacterial are discovered. In fact the transgenic plants and animal " created" by the scientists to obtain new beings with "profitable" characteristics for the man they follow the same principle that the broom of sorceresses: cows with the integrated gene of the human insulin in its genome that produce milk with insulin, rice with the gene of resistance to the drought coming from a cereal of the desert that allows its successful land culture with little rains, pigs with several genes of its genome replaced by human genes whose organs could be profiteers for transplants without bringing about rejection in the receiver, fluorescent mice with the gene of a marine crustacean, goats with several genes of its genome replaced by vegetal genes whose milk contains "good" fats without injurious cholesterol for the human arteries, etc...

Another graft of sorceresses on a Pinus canariensis in the National Park of La Caldera de Taburiente, located in the Island of La Palma.

The nurserymen look for by far interest these brooms of sorceresses. With its seeds they make establishments of dwarfed pines and with its ill branches they graft healthy pines that they grow as small graft of sorceress. As much as others they reach high prices in the world of the coniferous collectors to be seeded in particular gardens like true botanical peculiarities. Also the fans to the art of the Bonsai know very well these brooms of sorceresses, with whose seeds and grafts of branches they secure gorgeous units of Bonsais that by their slowest growth on approval put their masters and their patience.

Nevertheless sometimes it happens that from the center of the branches of one of these dwarfed pines, coverall of the obtained ones by graft, emerges a vigorous normal branch completely heals and the rest of the graft is ended up drying, as if suddenly the pine had cured itself by its own means. Until the moment the explanation is not known these spontaneous healings.

There are many other Phytoplasmas, each of them specific of a certain vegetal species, like the Candidatus Phytoplasma aurantifolia, that affects the lime tree, the Candidatus Phytoplasma fraxini, that affects the ash, the Candidatus Phytoplasma castaneae, that affects the chestnut tree, the Candidatus Phytoplasma mali, that affects the apple tree, the Candidatus Phytoplasma oryzae, that affects the rice, the Candidatus Phytoplasma ziziphi, that affects to jujube tree and the Candidatus Phytoplasma trifolii, that affects to the legumes of the Trifolium sort. All these phytoplasmas cause vegetal malformations similar to broom of sorceresses of the pines. 

Notholaena marantae subsp. subcordata, the priestess of Sun God

Its love by the sun is perhaps the characteristic that more good defines to the Notholaena marantae, a strange hairy fern adapted to support the long months of persistent drought of the Macaronesian summer, the direct and intense irradiation of the sun of the noon and the burning torrid heat of rocks oriented to the south of the Canary Islands, the Island of Madeira and the Cape Verde Islands. The Notholaena marantae that lives in the Macaronesia belongs to the subcordata subspecies. It belongs to the Sinopteridaceae family with Cheilanthes and Pellaea. In the Canary Islands it is called Doradilla acanelada, by the showy hair color cinnamon that covers the underside of the fronds. Its diploid chromosome is 2n =58, n = 29.

I finished back leaving the precious town of Santiago del Teide and I arranged to raise towards the Tip of the Teide by a road full of curves, constructed on an old black lava river. They would be the 10 hours in the morning and the insolation was blinding. After a curve, to each side of the road, it appeared before my eyes of lover of the ferns a numerous population of Notholaena, Cosentinia and Cheilanthes, all of them worshippers of the sun and the heat, the antithesis of the idea that usually we have of the ferns, because on the contrary that the immense majority of them, these three sorts needs to live to total sun, with very little humidity, much heat and much light. I enjoyed as a child who had just given him the toy he likes. I parked in a small landing of the roadside ditch, removed my old compact camera that has accompanied to me in so many trips and I get ready to occur a stuffing of ferns. At the outset I only saw Notholaenas with its showy turgid fronds of more than 35 centimeters, but when I approached and watched between rocks and black stones they appeared numerous Cosentinia vellea with its shelter of white hair and small Cheilanthes pulchella, all of them with the fresh and turgescent fronds good in spite of the apparent dryness and the burning heat. 

Vigorous Cosentinia vellea subsp. bivalens sharing the habitat with the Notholaena marantae subsp. subcordata. Extending the photos with a double click are better the details.

Old Cheilanthes pulchella, that keeps certain a similar one with the Notholaena, although their dimensions is much more modest and lacks the typical ferruginous pilosity in underside of their fronds. It grows in the same habitat, but it prefers more shaded situations. It is a Macaronesic fern, endemic of Canarias and Madeira.

Perhaps it was in the Island of La Palma where I could see the Notholaenas most vigorous with fronds almost 40 centimeters., growing in the low part of this retaining wall  builded to retain the volcanic gravel and sand of a small hill near Teneguia Volcano located in the South end of the island. The sun was blinding and the temperature to the 13 hours of the noon had to go up to around 40ºC and nevertheless the Notholaenas and Cosentinias that grew there saw well turgescent and fresh. Made kneel on the gravel to do good photos to them I discovered its secret. The basaltic black sand that was behind the wall was humid, very humid, until the extreme to grow mosses and hepatic. Then I asked myself from where could come this humidity in a place so frightfully dry and inhospitable, more similar to a desert that to a Macaronesian island. I raised the eyes towards the hill of volcanic gravel and without stopping thinking I turned and scanned with the view the skirt of Teneguia Volcano that lowers towards the sea and then I understood the secret of that one mystery when seeing the peculiar plantations of vine that natives cultivated so intelligently in small holes excavated in the volcanic gravel. The humidity came from the marine breeze that every morning raises from the loaded humidity sea, hits against the very porous basaltic gravel that absorbs the drops of dew as a sponge and the freshest water little by little, drop to drop, are filtered towards the subsoil and dampen the roots of the ferns and the vines, giving them the life.

Next to this gorgeous Cosentinia vellea that grows in the skirt of Teneguia Volcano, to the left of the photo, we can see small thalli of hepatics and a little mosses on a showy humid sand. This condensation of the humidity of the marine breeze follows the same process that horizontal rain, so typical of the Macaronesia, replacing the leaves of the trees of the Laurisilva by the porous volcanic gravel.

Teneguia volcano in the South coast of the Island of La Palma, where took place the last volcanic eruption in Spanish territory in 1971. Form leaves from a greater volcano called Cumbre Vieja than Natural Park in 1987 was declared. Just behind Teneguia Volcano it is the Atlantic Ocean, whose loaded humidity breeze every morning covers with dew black basaltic lava. In first plane several shrubs of Vinagrera, a canary endemic plant of scientific name Rumex lunaria.

Slope of Teneguia Volcano that descends smoothly towards the ocean with an impressive and ebullient vineyard which it covers the black lava of a full green carpet of life. The wine that is obtained from these vineyards has an extraordinary quality with a magmatic bouquet very special.

 In the Island of Madeira also grows the Notholaena marantae subsp. subcordata. Here we see a gorgeous unit near the city of Funchal.

Taking a walk by the long Footpath of the Pijaral, in the heat of Massive of Anaga, I was with this unit of pendular fronds, that at the outset I did not know what was, because in anything it was looked like a Notholaena. When I gave the return to a frond to photograph the sori and I saw ferruginous hairiness, I knew immediately that one was a solitary Notholaena born in a habitat little adapted for its species, perhaps of one spore taken by the wind. Their fronds downwards grew in a desperate attempt to catch the maximum of solar light, because right above there was a leafy forest of fayal-brezal that gave shade the most part of day.

This loving of the sun fern not always grows in places with constant water contribution throughout the year. These two units that live between rocks of the South skirt of the Tip of the Teide, far from the sea, must support to the long months of drought of the Tenerife summer without the contribution of the humidity of the marine breeze. But not probleme, although apparently seems dead and parched, its aspect is pure adaptation. When the soil where they are taken root is without water, rhizome reabsorbs the sap of the fronds, which are coiled on themselves and acquire the aspect of parched herbs. It is so his degree of dehydration that if a fronde with the hand is squeezed undoes between the fingers and nevertheless is not dead. With the first rains of the canary autumn, to the few hours the fronds are rehydrated, expanded, are unrolled, turned green again full of life as if nothing had happened. This adaptive mechanism is called aestivation.

Frond of Notholaena marantae subsp. subcordata with the bipennate, ovate-lanceolate lamina, reddish rachis and the whole or lobed sights in the base with the underside covered with paleae of an alive ferruginous or cinnamon color.

Detail of pinnae and pinnules of an alive more or less dark green color and peculiar off-white pluricellular hairs that arise from rachis and the beam of pinnae. Like the paraphyses of the Polypodium cambricum, these hairs would have the function of sensors of the environmental humidity and would indicate to the fern the optimal moment to open the sporangia and to disperse spores.

Detail of the pluricellular white hairs

Gorgeous cinnamon color of the paleae that cover the underside of pinnae and rachis.

Detail of the paleae of the Notholaena marantae, longer in rachis, that totally cover the sori with a protective shelter. Between the paleae also pluricellular white hairs grow, that as those of the beam of the frond, would have the same function to detect the environmental humidity degree, to disperse spores at the more adapted moment for their germination. 

Microscopic image of a palea of Notholaena marantae. 

Structure of a palea seen 400 increases. It is formed by the housings of dead and empty cells.

 Sporangium of great size with a ring of close and very together cells. 

Black very great and round spores with reticulated perispore.