Cut down by some cowardly miscreants’: Plant maiming, or the Malicious Cutting of Plants as an Act of Protest in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Rural England

Since the publication of Hobsbawm and Rudé's Captain Swing our understanding of the role(s) of covert protests in Hanoverian rural England has advanced considerably. Whilst we now know much about the dramatic practices of incendiarism and animal maiming and the voices of resistance in seemingly straightforward acquisitive acts, one major gap remains. Despite the fact that almost thirty years have passed since E. P. Thompson brought to our attention that under the notorious ‘Black Act’ the malicious cutting of trees was a capital offence, no subsequent research has been published. This paper seeks to address this major lacuna by systematically analysing the practices and patterns of malicious attacks on plants (‘plant maiming’) in the context of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century southern England. It is shown that not only did plant maiming take many different forms, attacking every conceivable type of flora, but also that it was universally understood and practised. In some communities plant maiming was the protestors' weapon of choice. As a social practice it therefore embodied wider community beliefs regarding the defence of plebeian livelihoods and identities.

Do leaves of plants on phosphorus-impoverished soils contain high concentrations of phenolic defence compounds?

Prominent theories of plant defence have predicted that plants growing on nutrient-poor soils produce more phenolic defence compounds than those on richer soils. Only recently has the Protein Competition Model (PCM) of phenolic allocation suggested that N and P limitation could have different effects because the nutrients are involved in different cellular metabolic processes. 2. We extend the prediction of the PCM and hypothesize that N will have a greater influence on the production of phenolic defensive compounds than P availability, because N limitation reduces protein production and thus competition for phenylalanine, a precursor of many phenolic compounds. In contrast, P acts as a recyclable cofactor in these reactions, allowing protein and hence phenolic production to continue under low P conditions. 3. We test this hypothesis by comparing the foliar concentrations of phenolic compounds in (i) phenotypes of 21 species growing on P-rich alluvial terraces and P-depleted marine terraces in southern New Zealand, and (ii) 87 species growing under similar climates on comparatively P-rich soils in New Zealand vs. P-depleted soils in Tasmania. 4. Foliar P concentrations of plants from the marine terraces were about half those of plants from alluvial soils, and much lower in Tasmania than in New Zealand. However, foliar concentrations of N and phenolic compounds were similar across sites in both comparisons, supporting the hypothesis that N availability is a more important determinant of plant investment in phenolic defensive compounds than P availability. We found no indication that reduced soil P levels influenced plant concentrations of phenolic compounds. There was wide variation in the foliar N and P concentrations among species, and those with low foliar nutrient concentrations produced more phenolics (including condensed tannins). 5. Our study is the first trait comparison extending beyond standard leaf economics to include secondary metabolites related to defence in forest plants, and emphasizes that N and P have different influences on the production of phenolic defence compounds. © 2009 British Ecological Society.

Thin-zone TAP reactor as a basis of �state-by-state transient screening

Thin-zone TAP reactor is presented as a basis of the new state-by-state transient screening approach which has been proposed by the authors for non-steady-state kinetic characterization of industrial catalysts. The general thin-zone TAP reactor model is described, and its mathematical status is justified analytically. It is shown that this model provides high enough accuracy to be applicable in the wide conversion interval (up to 90%), which is an important advantage of this approach compared with the traditional differential reactor.