Mountain Views News          Saturday, October 17, 2015

15

THE WORLD AROUND US

 Mountain Views News Saturday, October 17, 2015 


PLUTO’S BIG MOON CHARON REVEALS A COLORFUL AND VIOLENT HISTORY

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has returned 
the best color and the highest resolution images 
yet of Pluto’s largest moon, Charon—and these 
pictures show a surprisingly complex and violent 
history.

 At half the diameter of Pluto, Charon is the 
largest satellite relative to its planet in the solar 
system. Many New Horizons scientists expected 
Charon to be a monotonous, crater-battered 
world; instead, they’re finding a landscape 
covered with mountains, canyons, landslides, 
surface-color variations and more.

 “We thought the probability of seeing such 
interesting features on this satellite of a world at 
the far edge of our solar system was low,” said Ross 
Beyer, an affiliate of the New Horizons Geology, 
Geophysics and Imaging (GGI) team from the 
SETI Institute and NASA Ames Research Center 
in Mountain View, California, “but I couldn’t be 
more delighted with what we see!”

 High-resolution images of the Pluto-facing 
hemisphere of Charon, taken by New Horizons 
as the spacecraft sped through the Pluto system 
on July 14, and transmitted to Earth on Sept. 21, 
reveal details of a belt of fractures and canyons 
just north of the moon’s equator. This great canyon 
system stretches across the entire face of Charon, 
more than a thousand miles, and probably around 
onto Charon’s far side. Four times as long as the 
Grand Canyon, and twice as deep in places, these 
faults and canyons indicate a titanic geological 
upheaval in Charon’s past.

 “It looks like the entire crust of Charon has 
been split open,” said John Spencer, deputy lead 
for GGI at the Southwest Research Institute in 
Boulder, Colorado. “In respect to its size relative 
to Charon, this feature is much like the vast Valles 
Marineris canyon system on Mars.”

 The team has also discovered that the plains 
south of the canyon, informally referred to as 
Vulcan Planum, have fewer large craters than 
the regions to the north, indicating that they are 
noticeably younger. The smoothness of the plains, 
as well as their grooves and faint ridges, are clear 
signs of wide-scale resurfacing.

 One possibility for the smooth surface is a kind 
of cold volcanic activity, called cryovolcanism. 
“The team is discussing the possibility that an 
internal water ocean could have frozen long ago, 
and the resulting volume change could have led 
to Charon cracking open, allowing water-based 
lavas to reach the surface at that time,” said Paul 
Schenk, a New Horizons team member from the 
Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston.

 Even higher-resolution Charon images and 
composition data are still to come as New Horizons 
transmits data, stored on its digital recorders, over 
the next year -- and as that happens, “I predict 
Charon’s story will become even more amazing!” 
said mission Project Scientist Hal Weaver, of 
the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics 
Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.

 The New Horizons spacecraft is currently 3.1 
billion miles (5 billion kilometers) from Earth, 
with all systems healthy and operating normally.

You can contact Bob Eklund at: b.eklund@
MtnViewsNews.com.


CHRISTOPHER Nyerges


TREE TOBACCO (NICOTIANA GLAUCA)

Don’t eat this poisonous plant!


[Nyerges has led botanical 
field trips since 1974. He 
is the author of several 
books including “Guide 
to Wild Foods and Useful 
Plants,” “How to Survive 
Anywhere,” and others. More information about 
his classes and books is available from School of 
Self-Reliance, Box 41834, Eagle Rock, CA 90041, or 
www.SchoolofSelf-Reliance.com.]

 The most common wild tobacco in the west and 
southwest is Nicotiana glauca, commonly called 
tree tobacco or Indian tobacco. It’s a member of the 
Nightshade family. The plant is not a native of the 
U.S., but was introduced first into California by the 
Spanish missionaries from Bolivia, Argentina, and 
Paraguay.

 It’s far more common than the smaller native 
tobaccos. Tree tobacco grows large and tall, almost 
tree-like with its large bluish-green waxy leaves and 
yellow tubular flowers. 

 This South America native is now found along 
the flood beds of streams, along trails, and the 
least hospitable arid wasteland areas all over the 
southwestern and western United States. It is also 
readily cultivated in gardens, especially by people 
who grow them because the yellow tubular flowers 
attract hummingbirds. I have done this, and always 
enjoyed seeing the brilliant hummingbirds and 
bees around the tall plant. 

 The ovoid leaves are entire (not toothed), glabrous 
(not hairy), bluish green, and alternately arranged. 
The leaves of the new young plant are extremely 
large, sometimes up to two feet in length. The 
average length of a leaf, however, is approximately 
six inches. As the plant matures, the leaves become 
much smaller—from one inch to three inches. 

DON’T EAT TREE TOBACCO! 

It is poisonous to eat this plant. Poisonings occur 
most often with the new growth of the tree tobacco 
plant, well before any flowers have formed. 

 In one case, a man in Los Angeles County 
purchased and planted some collard seeds in his 
backyard, not far from the wild hilly country of 
the Angeles National Forest. Eventually, some 
plants came up which he picked, cooked, and ate 
like collard greens that he remembered from back 
home in the South. He became severely sick, and 
managed to get to the hospital where they pumped 
his stomach. 

 Later, he took some of the plants to a nearby 
nature center, and he learned that the plants which 
grew in his collard patch were actually tree tobacco. 
The tree tobacco seed was most likely already there, 
and they grew up before the collards had a chance. 
In fact, the new growth of tree tobacco does bear a 
resemblance to collard, so this man’s mistake was 
somewhat understandable. Fortunately, he lived. 

In the last few years, there were some women in the 
Sierra Madre area who actually died by confusing 
the young tree tobacco for something they thought 
was edible. 

People from the Southern states, and from Mexico, 
may be accustomed to eating the cooked greens of 
pokeweed (Phytolacca americana). Pokeweed is a 
toxic plant with water soluble toxins, and is never 
consumed raw. The young greens are boiled, the 
water discarded, and the greens are cooked again. 
The toxin in pokeweed is water soluble, so the 
greens are then safe to eat. In fact, pokeweed is a 
longtime traditional southern food, but everyone 
who eats it knows that you have to cook it first. 
When some of these folks move out to the western 
states and see young tree tobacco, they periodically 
confuse the two. 

 If tree tobacco is eaten, it can cause vomiting, 
stomach pains, diarrhea, general weakness, 
irregular pulse, shaking, convulsion of muscles, 
and even death. 

 Although tree tobacco does contain about 1% 
nicotine, it also has about 10% of anabasine, the 
alkaloid found in its leaves, stems and flowers. This 
alkaloid has been linked to birth defects in cows, 
pigs and sheep who graze on the plant. All parts of 
the tree tobacco are poisonous. According to Dr. 
James Adams (co-author of “Healing with Medicinal 
Plants of the West”), “Anabasine is a compound 
similar in structure and activity to nicotine, but 
more toxic in terms of seizure induction. As few as 
three leaves of Nicotiana glauca can be fatal.” 

 Even though you should never eat tree tobacco, 
there are a few good uses for the plant. 

MEDICINAL USES 

According to Edward K. Balls, author of “Early Uses 
of California Plants,” tree tobacco leaves were once 
used medicinally. “The leaves were supposed to be 
good steamed and used as a poultice to relieve a 
swollen throat, and steamed into the body for those 
suffering from rheumatism,” he explains. 

A poultice made from the leaves of this plant was 
occasionally used as a pain killer on cuts and was 
applied to a rattlesnake bite after an attempt had 
been made to suck out the venom. 

OTHER USES 

A dense tea brewed from the tree tobacco leaves can 
be used as an insect repellent and can be sprayed 
directly onto roses, vegetables, and animal pens and 
cages. This works great to get rid of aphids. Cook an 
ample concentration of fresh leaves in water in a big 
(covered) pot until there is a brown tea. Let cool, 
then strain and spray on your plants. You might 
wish to add a biodegradable liquid detergent to the 
tobacco tea so it will better adhere to the foliage.

Christopher next to a Tree Tobacco plant. 
Photo by Rick Adams. 


Mountain Views News 80 W Sierra Madre Blvd. No. 327 Sierra Madre, Ca. 91024 Office: 626.355.2737 Fax: 626.609.3285 Email: editor@mtnviewsnews.com Website: www.mtnviewsnews.com