Distribution Maps XI: Actinorhizal Plants

I've mentioned before my interest in the symbiotic association between a specific type of soil bacteria, called rhizobia, and legumes.[1] However, this isn't the only symbiosis found in nature where a bacterium fixes nitrogen for a legume host—it's not even the only symbiosis where the plant host forms a root nodule for the bacteria to inhabit. Besides rhizobia, there is a genus of bacteria, called Frankia, that form root nodules on several non-legume plants. These plants are known as actinorhizal plants. I've made distribution maps for some of the actinorhizal genera.

alders (Genus Alnus)

Genus Casuarina

mountain mahoganies (Genus Cercocarpus)

Genus Coriaria

Genus Dryas

oleasters (Family Elaeagnaceae)

silverberries (Genus Elaeagnus)

sea-buckthorns (Genus Hippophae)

cliff-roses and bitterbrushes (Genus Purshia)

buffaloberries (Genus Shepherdia)

There are a few genera that I didn't find maps for, but these represent a good chunk. A couple actinorhizal plants are found in Utah (e.g. mountain mahoganies and bitterbrushes). If I had realized this while I was living there, I probably would've tried to collect some Frankia. Perhaps it's better that I didn't know, though, because I've heard at the nitrogen fixation conferences I've attended [2] that Frankia is pretty hard to culture.

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Notes:

[1] See my post The Crooks in the Lot: What Is It That Matt Does, Anyway? Note that since I moved to Wisconsin (see here) to start a postdoc, I'm no longer working on that exact project, but I'm still working with rhizobia and legumes.

[2] See my post 22nd NASNFC.

Image attributions:

Alnus distribution map is by Ninjatacoshell, available at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alnus distribution.svg.

Casuarina distribution map is by Ninjatacoshell, available at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Casuarina distribution.svg.

Cercocarpus distribution map is by Ninjatacoshell, available at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cercocarpus distribution.svg.

Coriaria distribution map is by Ninjatacoshell, available at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Coriaria distribution.svg.

Dryas distribution map is by Ninjatacoshell, available at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dryas distribution.svg.

Elaeagnaceae distribution map is by Ninjatacoshell, available at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elaeagnaceae distribution.svg.

Elaeagnus distribution map is by Ninjatacoshell, available at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elaeagnus distribution.svg.

Hippophae distribution map is by Ninjatacoshell, available at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hippophae distribution.svg.

Purshia distribution map is by Ninjatacoshell, available at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Purshia distribution.svg.

Shepherdia distribution map is by Ninjatacoshell, available at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Shepherdia distribution.svg.