Unwitting ode from ancient empress praises a virus
Date: Thursday, April 24 @ 16:23:30 CDT
Topic: Archive of stories pre April 2007
LONDON (Reuters) -- An ancient poem by a Japanese empress praising the rich yellow colors of a plant was in fact an unwitting ode to a virus, according to the science journal Nature.
The poem, penned by the Empress Koken in 752 AD and appearing in the ancient anthology Man'yoshu, was a lyrical evocation of the foliage of eupatorium plants which turn a strikingly autumnal yellow at the height of summer.
However, scientists, exhibiting a less poetic turn of mind, have found that the color change she was praising was in fact due to a viral infection.
"We have shown that the beautiful foliar symptoms in eupatorium plants are caused by a geminivirus-satellite disease complex," researchers Keith Saunders, Ian Bedford, Tetsukazu Yahara and John Stanley wrote.
"To our knowledge, the poem that appears in the Man'yoshu represents the first documented description of a plant virus disease," they added.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/science/04/24/ancient.virus.reut/index.html
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