[HN Gopher] Being Green: A new book marvels at the strangeness o...
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       Being Green: A new book marvels at the strangeness of plants
        
       Author : Petiver
       Score  : 58 points
       Date   : 2024-05-09 20:14 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (slate.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (slate.com)
        
       | QuercusMax wrote:
       | Looks like an interesting book. The author will be giving a talk
       | at Powell's in downtown Portland next week - I just might go and
       | check it out.
        
       | __MatrixMan__ wrote:
       | Subtitled:
       | 
       | > A new book marvels at the strangeness of plants--and tries a
       | little too hard to explain how they're like people.
       | 
       | If you're ever at risk of thinking that plants are like people,
       | you can cure it by reading about alternation of generation in
       | bryophytes. If bryophytes were like humans it would be like if
       | our (haploid) sperm/eggs went out and got a job and an apartment
       | and a social life and only bothered spin up a (diploid) human for
       | sexy times. Plants are bizarre.
        
         | metaphor wrote:
         | To be fair, the article does warn:
         | 
         | >> _Rejecting the anthropomorphism that permeates the preceding
         | 10 chapters, she cautions that "putting too human a sheen on
         | plant intelligence is a failure of imagination."_
         | 
         | A courtesy caveat emptor for the objective passersby suffering
         | from acute antilibrary fatigue.
        
       | incompatible wrote:
       | Understanding how plants live is always going to be a useful
       | endeavour. But trying to judge whether a word like "intelligence"
       | applies to them isn't really about plants any more, but about how
       | we should define the word. Many of the words that we use aren't
       | strictly well-defined when you start thinking about them.
       | "Vehicle" was one that was discussed a while ago, in the context
       | of a sign banning vehicles in a park.
        
       | interestica wrote:
       | A friend recently discovered a _very_ strange plant growing in
       | their garden. It seemed utterly alien. They used an online visual
       | tool to identify it. It turns out it 's something called
       | "horsetail" and it's considered a "living fossil". (In its later
       | stages of life it does look much more plant-like).
       | 
       | Via wiki:
       | 
       | > Equisetum is the only living genus in Equisetaceae, a family of
       | vascular plants that reproduce by spores rather than seeds.
       | 
       | > Equisetum is a "living fossil", the only living genus of the
       | entire subclass Equisetidae, which for over 100 million years was
       | much more diverse and dominated the understorey of late Paleozoic
       | forests. Some equisetids were large trees reaching to 30 m (98
       | ft) tall.
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equisetum
       | 
       | The plants that we see right now are just a snapshot of what's
       | currently successful. If we eventually find alien life somewhere,
       | the strangeness might look a lot like the earth-bound "aliens" of
       | our own past.
        
         | MichaelRo wrote:
         | Well they are fairly common (seen them around here too),
         | although they do look a little strange. What amazes me from the
         | Wikipedia article: "People have regularly consumed horsetails.
         | For example, the fertile stems bearing strobili of some species
         | are cooked and eaten like asparagus(a dish called tsukushi in
         | Japan)."
         | 
         | If something is edible, people will probably have identified
         | and eaten it. I suspect this didn't happen in the modern period
         | of 'consumer culture', just for the taste and thrills but
         | likely during the numerous periods of famine in history.
         | 
         | Like grasspea ( "Lathyrus sativus",
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lathyrus_sativus ), sort of a
         | bean which strangely, can be eaten a few times to fend off
         | starvation but "The crop is harmless to humans in small
         | quantities, but eating it as a major part of the diet over a
         | three-month period can cause permanent paralysis below the
         | knees in adults and brain damage in children, a disorder known
         | as lathyrism."
         | 
         | Imagine having nothing to eat but grasspea, each day telling
         | yourself: "Last time, tomorrow I'll have a nice loaf of bread
         | with steak". Only to resort to grasspeas again, each day closer
         | to the point of no return.
        
       | ge96 wrote:
       | I still wonder how a seed knows how to grow
       | 
       | Is it like a baby/mitosis/dna, why does it grow
        
         | MathMonkeyMan wrote:
         | I don't know, but germination has probably been studied a lot:
         | <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7824603/>
        
         | mjan22640 wrote:
         | A seed is a small plant plus nutrients, it knows how to grow
         | the same way as a mature plant does.
        
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       (page generated 2024-05-10 23:02 UTC)