Baby Eucalypts

When fire has passed,

eucalypts are reborn.

Tough woody capsules

release their seeds,

falling on ash

which is nutrient-rich.

Plunging their roots

into first-rained earth,

their view of the Sun

helps speed that growth,

for the canopy’s shade

is burnt and gone.

Animals fled.

So new leaves, uneaten,

make a dash

towards the sky.

No insects in sight

means delicate shoots

don’t get sucked dry

of their life-giving juice.

Alone in the quiet

on black-rich soil,

those baby trees have

the best start in life.

http://www.forest-education.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/eucalypt_adaptations.pdf

Fire has been a constant visitor to Tasmanian forests for millions of years. It has shaped the evolution of many plant species and communities. In fact, many species are not only adapted to fire, but actually have features that help to promote it. Fire is an essential part of the life cycle of many plant communities, including dry eucalypt forests and wet eucalypt forests. Fire behaves differently, however, in each of these systems. A key difference between eucalypts and rainforest trees is that eucalypts are adapted to, and take advantage of major, widespread disturbances of the forest canopy, especially those caused by fire. Individual trees of different species can withstand the effects of fire to varying degrees, but all eucalypt forest types depend on it to some extent for regeneration. Eucalypt seed release is triggered by fire, when tough, woody capsules empty their contents onto a nutrient-rich ash seedbed from which all the understorey competition for light, water and nutrients has been removed. Browsing animals are driven out for a time, and the heat-treatment of soil reduces the numbers of plant-eating insects and soil organisms during the short but crucial early growth period.

Soldiers smelled garlic;

horseradish; sulphur.

A kind of fusty

mustardy odour.

Then twelve hours later

they’d start to go blind,

get pus-filled blisters

and possibly died.

Chemist Fritz Haber

in World War One,

made mustard gas poison

worse than a gun.

This silently sneaky

chemical tool

spread crippling pain

that was very cruel.

Survivors were checked.

When blood tests were done,

most of their body’s

immune cells had gone.

They’d lost the white cells that

could turn into cancer.

Was mustard gas poison

a possible answer?

From a weapon of war

to helping the sick

this chemical cocktail

became our first pick

to fight against cancer.

A new remedy!

Oncology’s

chemotherapy.

What I regards as an appropriate link and 4min video for this topic 

https://montrealgazette.com/opinion/columnists/the-right-chemistry-mustard-gas-and-the-beginnings-of-chemotherapy

The Right Chemistry: Mustard gas and the beginnings of chemotherapy

The Bari bombing was not the key to the development of chemotherapy. That dubious “credit” goes to the 1917 mustard gas attack at Ypres.

JOE SCHWARCZ, SPECIAL TO THE MONTREAL GAZETTE 

Updated: September 13, 2019

Dr. Joe Schwarcz: Mustard gas and chemotherapy4:03

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It makes for a compelling story. The Second World War is being furiously fought across Europe. The Allies finally gain a foothold in Italy and the port city of Bari becomes a critical point of entry for troops and supplies to the Mediterranean theatre. The harbour is filled with ships on Dec. 2, 1943 when Nazi airplanes drop from the clouds, their bombs raining destruction.

The SS John Harvey, an American ship carrying a cargo of 2,000 mustard gas bombs in spite of the Geneva Protocol of 1925 that banned the use of chemical weapons, explodes, killing all of its crew and spreading the gas across the harbour and town. But the clouds from which the Nazi planes emerged have a silver lining. Researchers note that the victims of mustard gas exposure have a very low rate of white blood cell multiplication, suggesting that mustard gas could also interfere with the characteristically rapid multiplication of cancer cells. And so it is that the Bari attack serendipitously leads to the development of mustard gas as an anti-cancer drug and launches the concept of “chemotherapy.” At least that is the way the story is told in numerous text books and articles.

A nice romanticized account, but the fact is that the first use of a modified version of mustard gas to treat cancer in a human was in the United States in 1942, more than a year before the Bari attack! The seminal event that gave rise to the treatment was indeed a mustard gas attack, but one that the Germans unleashed on Allied troops at Ypres in Belgium in 1917.

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