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I have a concept of a ice forest "oasis" existing in Antarctica thanks to fat conifer trees that sort of looks like a baobab. They achieve this thanks to being thermogenic, something we know certain plants can do now, albeit smaller ones. Being large and rounded (like whales, etc.) and have a coat of lichen(pseudo-fur) helps keep the from freezing and allows them to be productive for longer than a normal tree. The heat could also keep its lichen coat alive and in return insulate it better. I would think that the 24hrs of sun during summers should provide lots of time to build up energy reserves, it just happens that ,in our timeline, they never evolved the rare feature to thermoregulate.

Do you think that this type of tree would allow an ecosystem to spring up around it? In other worlds, if there was a forest of these trees, would it allow for the survival of land animals in current antarctica? Would a forest would stop some of the wind chill and in return make it easier to stay above freezing? enter image description here

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  • $\begingroup$ An interesting old question that might give you some additional ideas to work with while designing your tree (love the idea, BTW). $\endgroup$
    – JBH
    Commented Dec 7 at 17:43
  • $\begingroup$ the big problem you have is how little sunlight they are getting, the tree have ot be so far spaced they will not do anything for wind, they also won't look anything like trees since all the light is coming in at a ver low angle. $\endgroup$
    – John
    Commented Dec 7 at 19:34
  • $\begingroup$ The get a lot of sun for part of the year, I was kind of thinking it was a flood-to-drought dichotomy. And I don't believe the angle is all that low for most of the year, just late autumn and early spring. Even that might be countered by being slow growing. $\endgroup$
    – tom Bebop
    Commented Dec 9 at 2:26
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    $\begingroup$ Article that might interest you regarding photosynthesis in low light levels during Arctic winters. $\endgroup$
    – Escaped dental patient.
    Commented Dec 10 at 13:12
  • $\begingroup$ So they basically the article says that plants can still grow under low light. The the cold does slow growth, but it also inhibits predation. The predation being inhibited far more than slow growth such that there is a net gain in the plant/colony. Hmmm interesting. $\endgroup$
    – tom Bebop
    Commented Dec 11 at 14:09

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The problem with a spherical shape is that is minimizes the surface for a given volume, and to capture sunlight you need a lot of surface.

That is even more true in a place like Antarctica, where even when you have 24 hours of light, it is always grazing and therefore with a low intensity, as opposite in hot deserts, where spheroidal plants do no suffer the relatively low light capturing area because light comes at a dime a dozen.

To build enough reserves to allow surviving the long polar night the plant would need a lot of surface. On top of that, the plant would also need liquid water: keeping yourself warm in one thing, melting the snow is another. And water is known for needed a hella lot of heat to change phase. And that's again energy that the plant has to capture from sunlight.

Even if you have only the trunk to be a sphere, each leaf and branch will act as a fin, dispersing precious heat in an already freezing cold climate.

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  • $\begingroup$ Sorry, I didn't mean to say the whole plant was round, just the trunk. it would still have branches and leaves/needles. The core of the plant would be round and in extreme conditions the extremities would be semi-sacrificial. I also think some species of conifer are deciduous, so maybe the heat allows it to start growing early in spring and get new leaves and crowd out the sun for plants that have to wait for temperatures to warm up. I am also presuming this has time to evolve and not just chucked into modern Antarctica. $\endgroup$
    – tom Bebop
    Commented Dec 7 at 7:19
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    $\begingroup$ @tomBebop best to add that in the question as well, and try to find any other missed details. $\endgroup$
    – Trioxidane
    Commented Dec 7 at 9:09
  • $\begingroup$ I don't know that the planet would need a lot of surface, it would need a lot of "body fat," the storage mechanism. Said another way, the ratio of sun-capturing surface area to storage medium is just algebra, once you know (or declare... which is what we'll be doing here) the solar absorption rate of the leaves, the sugar conversion rate (photosynthesis), the storage conversion rate (into "body fat") and the energy density of the storage medium. Liquid water could be stored inside the plant, too (cactus...). Huh. @tomBebop, please tell me that you want believable and not plausible. $\endgroup$
    – JBH
    Commented Dec 7 at 16:03
  • $\begingroup$ Believably is what i was going for. $\endgroup$
    – tom Bebop
    Commented Dec 9 at 2:21
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The Dahurian larch can survive temperatures of -70F (-56C). This and other trees that grow in cold climates typically have long, slender trunks. The Glossopteris tree used to grow in Antarctica 280 million years ago, and is clearly preserved in the fossil record but Antarctica was a lot warmer then.

The fattest trees such as the Baobab in the picture seem to live in hot, dry areas. If anything, it seems that trees go in the opposite way to what you are asking for.

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  • $\begingroup$ My thinking was that Baobabs are "fat" for water/energy storage purposes. Just wondering if the "fatness" could be reused for another purpose. $\endgroup$
    – tom Bebop
    Commented Dec 9 at 2:23

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