[HN Gopher] Walking Trees, Parasitic Flowers, and Other Remarkab...
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       Walking Trees, Parasitic Flowers, and Other Remarkable Plants
        
       Author : anarbadalov
       Score  : 68 points
       Date   : 2021-09-22 17:57 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (thereader.mitpress.mit.edu)
 (TXT) w3m dump (thereader.mitpress.mit.edu)
        
       | filoeleven wrote:
       | One remarkable native parasitic US flower is the Ghost Pipe. It
       | parasitizes the mycorrhizal interface between a fungus and plant.
       | They are uncommon or rare, so I was overjoyed the first time I
       | saw a little stand of them, having read about them years before.
       | I did not pick any (please don't), but I did want to feel their
       | texture and was surprised to find them firm and waxy, not flimsy
       | like I expected.
       | 
       | If you live near Philadelphia, you can find them under the right
       | conditions in the Wissahickon Valley Park. I hiked there with
       | friends and was shocked by how many we spotted just off trail;
       | they were all over the place!
       | 
       | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monotropa_uniflora
        
       | antcas wrote:
       | > Then there are mangroves whose trunk flattens out at the base;
       | these trees stem from a branch at a low elevation -- and they
       | walk!...Is this tree really walking? When we walk, our physical
       | mass moves as a whole. But no displacement of matter occurs with
       | mangroves; the way they grow just makes it look that way. The
       | "movement" is the growing process, four to five meters a year.
       | The branch experiences necrosis and vanishes at one end, while it
       | keeps developing on the other.
        
         | mmtauqir wrote:
         | Well it does say "poetic" in the name of the book, which I own,
         | and I would say "the way they grow just makes it look that way"
         | would definitely _poetically_ count as walking.
        
         | ncmncm wrote:
         | This turns out to have been wholly fabricated by tour guides.
         | 
         | Appealing story, though.
         | 
         | BTW, if you like that sort of thing,
         | https://cantrip.org/slow.pdf
        
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       (page generated 2021-09-22 23:00 UTC)