New answers tagged flora
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This is a specialty crop
It's important to note the restriction that 'psychic' measures are needed to propagate the parasite. This means it cannot spread much further than people with the deliberate intention for it to spread desire. To keep things simple I'm going to assume that non-human animals are either not psychic or don't want the plants to form ...
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Frameshift: Exactly what do your terms mean?
How about a plant that grows as a mass of shrubs--connected underground, it's all one plant. The mass of shrubbery gets bigger and bigger until it's stores are great enough, then when the time is right it sends up this most epic of flower spikes.
The objective of this is to disperse it's progeny. Each of those &...
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It's viable, yes.
Nature has done weirder things than what you're describing. Boababs, as you mentioned, are absurdly thick for their height and canopy size. Bamboo grows very fast. And you want a tree that merges multiple stems to a single stem? Look at the banyan. (coincidentally, some species of banyan can get about 100 feet tall, so already on your ...
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1.5 meters a year
the fastest growing large tree on earth can grow between 5-8 feet per year on average. with a very large tree I would use the lowest range on that so 5ft a year or 1.5 meters.
keep in mind giant redwood average 2-3ft a year so 5 is not that absurd. But this is under idea conditions, if it is dry or cold it can drop to a few inches a year so ...
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These are bamboos. A meter a day at least.
These freakish bamboos are grasses are not limited by xylem cavitation in the way tall trees are.
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The maximum height of grasses is determined by roots
Although root pressure appears to occupy a central role in the
functioning of the water transport system of many monocot plants,
among dicotyledonous species ...
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Yes because of human cultivation. Any humans who found a magic plant would want to cultivate it and if possible reproduce it. Just like coffee beans are other planets with positive health effects.
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Oh yes.
A timely musing. It turns out that forest trees might be doing exactly as you propose. But not with magic.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-whispering-trees-180968084/
“Some are calling it the ‘wood-wide web,’” says Wohlleben.... “All the
trees here, and in every forest that is not too damaged, are connected
to each other through ...
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Yes, they have a significant advantage: Symbiosis with animals
Bonding with...
a large carnivore drives away herbivores.
a herbivore that eats plants competing with the magic plant.
an ant queen to have an army of ants to bring soil-enriching stuff to the plant. Or maybe the plant is carnivorous and is directly fed. Might also help keeping herbivores and ...
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High potential, high workload, big risks
Architecture can have high benefits, but also bug rusks. Lets look at some advantages first.
Many crops that are harvested on a large scale will be destroyed in the process or die out after the season. Think of the wheat related plants or seasonal raspberry plants. Here you can get great advantages! If you can make ...
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Preternatural vigor
A tree will capture the nitrogen and phosphorus from the decaying corpse. These trees will become unusually vigorous from their diet, putting forth an enthusiastic profusion of growth. An unnatural profusion. Even the roots will sprout, pushing forth new growth from underground.
https://www.plantanswers.com/live_oak_root_sprouts.jpg
...
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It can lead to the formation of a forest of mummies...
There are some things loggers expect to come across when cutting down trees. Bird’s nests and things stuck in the branches seem like a given – a mummified dog in the center of a tree, however, does not.
But that’s exactly what a team of loggers with the Georgia Kraft Corp. found while cutting down a ...
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Distilled water is dangerous to drink not because it lacks nutrients (you don't get nutrients from water, water with nutrients is called a soup), but because the lack of dissolved minerals and salts causes citholysis due to osmosis: water enters the cells as a way to balance the different saline concentration and the cells end up bursting. A classical ...
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this would probably revolutionize agriculture but it could lead to something like the Irish potato famine where a food source is relied on too heavily and something wipes out most of the food source leading to famine,
but on the other side the parasite could decimate the plant population because the parasite (if left unchecked) could infect everything and ...
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Macroradiolarian?
http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=65179
I am digging it. How about macroradiolarians?
Your glass grasses are scaled up radiolarians. These organisms construct glass shells or tests and house within them photosynthetic endosymbionts. Your glass grasses are no longer free living but sessile in the manner of corals. ...
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In the context of the Question, yes, of course it would… by definition. That's broadly a simple re-statement of the theory of evolution.
If grass - or anything else - grew into (whatever) it would necessarily be able to thrive in that state.
In that context, how are shards of glass different from grains of sand or sticks of chalk?
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Why
Most designs in nature are already quite smart. Evolution has fine tuned a plant's physiology to serve its purpose, in a certain environment. In this case, to assert your idea, you could try to reason why certain properties exist, specifically, why grass benefits from a certain flexibility,
1] Seeds I really wonder if a glass container would work out for ...
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Why Not?
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with a plant creating a rigid and sharp structure, especially as a defensive one. There would need to be an underlying ability to adapt to breakage - either treating it as budding, or having underlying flexible structures so breaks can bend. Wood is rigid, but also flexible. there would need to be a trade-off.
It ...
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Decimation of crops
It seems a good idea at first. The parasite will keep the plants alive as much as possible and produce food indefinitely. The problem is that all organisms stop reproducing. This is in many ways similar to the 'forever young but can't reproduce' problem. Over time things will happen that will kill them, making the time of these people ...
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You have a problem with floods
In your other question, you show a single river in a similar space, which runs downhill and does a loop. The river here (as well at the one from the other question) will likely scrub out large parts of your structure in a downright dangerous way.
Assuming that the river will periodically silt up and erode in idfferent ways ...
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