[HN Gopher] An Aquatic Plant That Bloomed Underwater Was Among F...
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An Aquatic Plant That Bloomed Underwater Was Among First Flowering
Plants
Author : dnetesn
Score : 68 points
Date : 2022-01-02 11:46 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (worldsensorium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (worldsensorium.com)
| bradrn wrote:
| Paper: https://www.pnas.org/content/112/35/10985. Note that the
| paper comes to a slightly different conclusion than this summary
| article: in particular, it never claims that _Montsechia_ might
| be 'the original flowering plant' as the article does, nor does
| it say that _Ceratophyllum_ is a modern-day descendant of
| _Montsechia_ (in fact, it says quite the opposite).
| pvaldes wrote:
| Reminds me more like a member of Charophyta, that are algae but
| I'm not expert in prehistory plants and I could be wrong.
| hammock wrote:
| How would a flower get pollinated underwater? All of the aquatic
| plants I can think of float their flowers on the surface for
| pollination - even eelgrass, which technically flowers underwater
| (https://www.indefenseofplants.com/blog/2019/8/14/eelgrass-se...)
| pvaldes wrote:
| Is the same as being pollinated by air currents
| hammock wrote:
| No offense, but I don't believe you. Can you cite a plant
| that gets pollinated underwater? Or are you suggesting that
| this ancient plant also pollinated above the water (as in the
| case of the eelgrass example I provided)?
| pvaldes wrote:
| Yes, there are plants that are pollinated underwater, of
| course. You don't need to believe me, just use the
| bibliography available.
| kadoban wrote:
| Seems weird that most (all?) modern aquatic plants lost that
| ability then. Certainly not impossible by any means, but
| still weird. Does that mean anything, for example did
| all/most aquatic plants die off and terrestrial plants move
| back to the water later?
| pvaldes wrote:
| Aquatic plants have different goals. Most of them are
| aggressively clonal and flowering is just one possible
| strategy to compete
|
| For underwater pollination, well, we assume that Posidonia
| is pollinated by water currents but there is an huge number
| of things that we still don't know about sea ecosystems.
| ivanhoe wrote:
| Interesting because today the majority of aquatic plants are
| actually immersed growers, or plants that live part of the season
| under the water and part out of it. Fully under the water you can
| find mostly algae.
| ginko wrote:
| The thought that the first flowering plants crossed to land only
| some 200M+ years after the first vertebrate is absolutely
| fascinating.
| ffhhj wrote:
| Also grass wasn't common until long after most dinosaurs died
| at the end of the Cretaceous, just 65M years ago.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Boy, that site is _awful_ on an iPad. The margins are so wide,
| it's like reading a pencil.
|
| I was watching a documentary, awhile back, that said the first
| flowering plants were underwater plants. I don't remember the
| exact age. That indicates that the idea that flowering plants
| started underwater, isn't new.
|
| Another fairly recent (geologically) plant, is grass. Whenever
| you see artistic depictions of dinosaurs, grazing in fields of
| grass, it's not really accurate. I think ferns may have filled
| the "ground cover" niche, back then.
| r00fus wrote:
| I feel nostalgic when I see formatting complaints, as my
| defaults on iOS are to put all sites on "reader mode" unless
| whitelisted. Annoying sometimes but almost never have
| formatting issues.
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(page generated 2022-01-04 23:03 UTC)