Understanding the meaning of scientific words sometimes is a big help--or other times just leaves us even more confused. How about the word "phytolith". This translates as "plant stone". But what in tarnation is a "plant stone"? Surprise!—it's a stone manufactured by a plant. Now, before you visualize fist-sized rocks dangling from leaves, you should know that phytoliths run less than 100 micrometers in size, which is pretty small—in fact, less than 39 ten-thousandths of an inch. You need a pretty good microscope to be able to see them.
Phytoliths are made of what botanists call biogenic silica, or opal,
and are deposited between or inside of cells. Different groups of plants have
differently shaped phytoliths, and these usually are preserved in the soil after a
plant decays. Thus phytoliths are used by people who study the past to determine major
past vegetation types at a site, and through this type of information, what the past
climate was like. Who would have thought that plants had rocks, let alone stones that
tell a story?
Contributor: Arthur H. Harris, Laboratory for Environmental Biology, Centennial Museum, University of Texas at El Paso.
Desert Diary is a joint production of the Centennial Museum and KTEP National Public Radio at the University of Texas at El Paso.