Bracken adaptation mechanisms and xenobiotic chemistry*
Miguel E. Alonso-Amelot**, Alberto Oliveros, María Pía
Calcagno, and Elida Arellano
Grupo de Química Ecológica, Departamento
de Química, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Los Andes, Mérida
5101, Venezuela
Abstract: As opposed to animals, plants have to cope with the
resources, environmental restrictions, herbivores, and pathogens they
find in the particular spot where they are bound to grow. Hence, resource
sequestration, predation and competition relationships, and adaptation
to various sources of other environmental stresses and their seasonal
variation must be flexible enough to ensure survival and successful
reproduction. Plants express this fitness by a combination of biological
traits and chemical arsenals which operate under the reign of a genome
of considerable plasticity. For the great majority of plants it is either
the biological characters or the chemical composition that are explored
independently to understand their fitness. But only in a few instances
is the combination of these two avenues examined jointly. The extensive
studies on the ecology, chemistry, and toxicology of bracken (Pteridium
aquilinum) make this fern one of the few examples where a reasonable
explanation for its extraordinary success is beginning to emerge by
the combined perception of these two most important aspects of plant
life. It is the purpose of this article to briefly review how the sum
of biological and chemical traits cooperates to make of bracken one
of the five most pernicious weeds in the world today.
*Lecture presented at the 22nd IUPAC International
Symposium on the Chemistry of Natural Products, São Carlos, Brazil,
3-8 September 2000. Other presentations are published in this issue,
pp. 549-626.
**Corresponding author
