Sub-Total: $0.00
Unstoppable Plants
I have had plants in my collection that I have bought that I thought would die 2 weeks after buying them. I have some that are cuttings from 50-year-old plants and are succeeding happily. I am amazed by these 3 stories today, as I hope you will be too.
Fossil Flowers
Else Marie Friis is a Danish botanist and paleontologist. Her work has been fundamental in the phylogenetic analysis of angiosperms, with widespread application to reproductive biology.
She became interested in discovering whether early fossil flowering plants could be identified. Fossilized pollen discovered in the 1960s had identified that flowering plants originated during the Cretaceous, but the nature of the plants themselves remained unknown. Most parts of plants, especially the flowers that are needed to identify species, are made of very delicate tissue that is unlikely to become fossilized. It was also considered that the first flowers were likely to be large structures like most modern flowers, adding to the likelihood that they would not become fossilized. The first Cretaceous flower was found by Bruce H. Tiffney in the 1970s in sediment from Martha’s Vineyard in the USA but was seen as an exceptional discovery. Friis and her collaborators made the technical decision to seek very small pieces of charcoal within likely soft rocks through sieving the crumbled sediment, and then using a microscope to view the resulting fragments. This was based on the hypothesis that charcoal formed during natural fires would be much more likely to be preserved intact. In this way she found very small flowers, only a few millimeters in length, that were around 80 million years old. During her career she has characterized and named over 200 species of fossil flowering plants.
A Thriving Garden in a Sealed Bottle That Hasn’t Been Watered in Over 40 Years
When David Latimer planted a seed in a glass bottle on Easter Sunday 1960, he had no idea that it would grow into a swath of greenery that would thrive untouched for decades. Despite the fact that the last time Latimer watered it was in 1972, the sealed bottle garden is still growing as vigorously as ever, filling the bottle entirely with lush plant life.
After pouring some compost into the globular bottle, Latimer carefully lowered a spiderwort seedling into the mix, followed by a pint of water. The bottle was sealed and placed in a bright spot, and the magic of photosynthesis took over. The bottle garden was completely cut off from fresh water and air except for a single watering in 1972, but it still managed to form its own self-sufficient ecosystem. Plants obtain the energy they require to grow by absorbing sunlight through photosynthesis. The process also produces oxygen and moisture in the air; the moisture accumulates inside the bottle and “rains” back down on the plants.
Leaves that rot at the bottom of the bottle produce the carbon dioxide required for photosynthesis and nutrition.
It’s incredible that with just a little bit of sunlight, the plants can thrive even in this one-of-a-kind environment, successfully creating a microcosm of the Earth in a bottle. Latimer, who is now 80 years old, hopes that when he dies, his grown children will continue the experiment.
The Oldest tree in the World
The Great Basin Bristlecone Pine (Pinus longaeva) has been deemed the oldest tree in existence, reaching an age of over 5,000 years old. The Great Basin Bristlecone pines are an extremely rare species found only in California, Nevada and Utah
The bristlecone pine’s success in living a long life can be attributed to the harsh conditions it lives in. Very cold temperatures associated with high winds, in addition to a slow growth rate, create dense wood. This means some years they grow so slowly; they don’t add a ring of growth. Due to the slow growth and dense wood, the bristlecone pine is resistant to insects, fungi, rot, and erosion. The lack of vegetation where they grow make bristlecone pines rarely affected by wildfires. These slow-growing trees can reach a height of 50 feet and a trunk diameter of 154 inches.
Even the needles on these fascinating trees live up to 30 years long. This allows the trees to conserve energy by not having to reproduce new ones. It takes about two years for the bristlecone pinecone to reach maturity, which is unique amongst trees in the conifer family. The bristlecone pine gets its name from the cones whose scales appear to have a claw-like bristle.
The Great Basin Bristlecone pines also live at lower elevations where they grow more rapidly, but there they remain vulnerable to forest fires and other factors, which do not allow them to achieve legendary age or their haunting twisted shapes.
The Rose of Jericho
This an amazing plant and no article I could pen would do this link and its author justice.
