From lhess@msu.oscs.montana.eduWed Apr 17 14:59:33 1996
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1996 16:21:59 GMT
From: lhess@msu.oscs.montana.edu
To: sustag-public@amani.ces.ncsu.edu
Subject: Re: Indicator plants

In article <4krbos$5u8@altrade.nijmegen.inter.nl.net>, f.vd.laan@inter.nl.net (Frits v/d Laan) writes:
>I would like to get any information about plants that are known to 
>indicate at a early stage anything to do with there environment,
>shortage or to much of nutrician N, P, K, Mg etc.  or are sensitive for
>or atract insects earlier than most plants.
>If there are databases already existing or someone knows such planttypes
>please mail them to me.
>Any free data will be posted back to these groups when there's enough
>data  collected
>
>Frits v/d Laan
>Organic horticulture


Sir:
	Agronomically speaking, there are a couple crops I can think of which
tend to indicate nutritional deficiencies.
	1. Pretty much anything in the Fabaceae (peas, beans, alfalfa, etc.)
and iron. This is because of the root nodulation complex, which requires a form
of hemoglobin, and thus iron.
	2. Sugarbeets and boron. Boron is regularly top- dressed to sugarbeet
fields in modern agriculture.
	There are others. Lots of them. 

Lidia Hess-- College of Agriculture-- Montana State University at Bozeman-- USA