I do feel bad for plants in general. Like, I know they are often as vicious as animals in many ways, just slower. But, I mean, they just show up and they’re like, “I Think I Will Evolve To Eat The Sun And Also Make Oxygen And How Now Is All This.” And, like, everything fucking dies at first (totally not plants fault, btw. okay maybe it was but they didn’t mean to) but then new things evolve. And they’re like, “Fuck it, eating each other suuuucks. Let’s eat the plants which give us life.” And so we start doing that. And plants are all, “Oh Dear No, I Do Not Care At All For Being Eaten. I Will Make Myself Into Poison Sometimes.” But, y’know, stuff kept eating plants anyway so plants, ever the bro, came up with a new idea. “I Have Made A Decision About Being Eaten And You May Eat Me Friends And Here Is An Especially Tasty Bit Packed All Full of Delicious Sugars Which I Have Produced At Great Cost (What They Do Not Know Is That My Seeds Are Within And Shall Be Propagated Near And Far By Their Dung)“ But that’s not good enough for animals, no, not at all. We love the fuck out of some pomegranates but also alliums which are like, “I Have Not Decided To Go In For This Being Eaten Business. I Shall Be Very Foul Tasting And Also A Poison.” But no, sorry, onions, you fucked up. You accidentally wound up with a species that just doesn’t give up or fully comprehend the idea of things tasting “”‘bad’“’ or other concepts like not eating poison. (Sorry, plants, later we turn some of you who are not poison into a poison we consume recreationally. We really enjoy eating poison.) Legit, alliums are deadly to, like, every other species. And we call them aromatics and throw them in everything. Peppers are the best, though. They completely got on the being eaten train. BUT ONLY BIRDS Peppers are like, “You May Eat Me, Fair Avian, For You Are Sure To Spread Me A Great Distance. But, Mammal, Take HEED. Should You Eat Me Then I Will Burn You Most Terribly.” And we were all about that. “The FUCK, burning? I love pain,” said humans, presumably. “You know, peppers, you and evolution have done a good job at burning us but I am pretty sure we could make your chemical agony even more potent. Come hang with us,” humans added to a very confused pepper just before creating the ghost chili.
when you realize strawberries aren’t berries but bananas are and you’ve been lied to your whole life. yet again
Raspberries aren’t either. But kiwi and pumpkin are. 😑
Why must y’all do this, let me live in ignorance
^ literally
Also, watermelon is not a fruit. Its actually a vegetable. It belongs in the cucumber and squash family
I am so tired
I have learned Too Much
Pumpkin isn’t a squash?
Okay I’m intruding bc I am a Botanist and I am Upset:
Bananas are berries: confirmed. Strawberries not actually berries: confirmed. They are aggregates of achenes on a fleshy receptacle. Raspberries aren’t berries: not entirely. Aggregates of drupes (single-seeded berries). Kiwis are berries: confirmed. Pumpkins are berries: false! They are pepos, diagnostic of their family, the Cucurbitaceae. Watermelon is not a fruit: SUPER FALSE. They contain seeds, they are fruit. They are also pepos and are related closely to pumpkins. Squashes, gourds, cucumbers, melons, pumpkins are all fruits, all pepos, all in the Cucurbitaceae.
I’m less upset now bye
plant geek tumblr has saved us all
today i learned ‘pepo’ is a word and cant stop saying it
If it is a part of a plant that contains seeds, it is a fruit.
-in my opinion the eastern skunk cabbage is one of the smartest and coolest plants ever
-i originally fell into them because of my research interest regarding thermogenic plants! these plants produce heat when they bloom. in the Eastern Skunk Cabbage’s case, the first week- where the female blooms are presented- the plant keeps its internal flower temperature at an exact, consistant temperature, which they do by measuring the exact outer temperature and adjusting their flower’s temperature accordingly. we dont know how they measure the outer temperature, only the part of the plant that does. the second week- when the male flowers are presented- the plant continues to heat up, but the heating patterns are much more erratic and have higher and lower variability.
-eastern skunk cabbages are deep rooted plants with contractile roots. contractile roots are roots in a ring structure that fill with water, then squeeze them out, draging them deep into the mud. the reason the ESC in both its vegetative and flowering stages is so close to the ground is that the plant grows downward, dragging itself deeper into the mud each year it blooms.
-the life span of these plants are unknown, but we know that these plants plan their blooms literal years ahead. like if you were to uproot one and cut it down the middle, you would see this years’ bloom, then the next years bloom nestled down in the tuber waiting to come up. and another one under that. and another one under that. it goes on until you hit the tiniest blooming structure being developed at the bottom of the tuber, which apparently is about the size of a tip of a ballpoint pen and can be the planned fruiting structure for up to ten years in the future.
-they are stinky babs when crushed bc their pollinators are newly-emerging flies and beetles.
-theyre literally like the most comically disgusting plants ever like they love living in bogs and having cold, wet mud over their roots at all times of the year and smell like rotting flesh
-did i mention that they’re the first to bloom in the early spring by blooming first, using the heat they produce during bloom to burn through the snow??? bc they do that
-also btw they aren’t actual cabbages, idk y theyre called that
-if you eat them uncooked they’ll secrete acid that will burn ur mouth and throat. that being said, these plants were used by indigenous peoples as a common food/medicine when cooked, especially the root!
some cool pics from iowaplants.com (go to that link to learn more about their really weird flowering structure and physiology, which is the same throughout the ultra-weird aroid family but is a really good example):
the seeding structure (the weird yellow ball in the middle of pic 1, dried and floating down a nearby stream, where the flowering structures break open and drop seeds downstream from the parent):
the yellow ball is called the “spadix”. this is the part that heats up, and is actually many flowers, as demonstrated in this close up:
the babs in their non-flowering phase in spring, summer, and fall:
Pholisma sonorae is a parasitic plant in the same family as the forget-me-not (Boraginaceae) which grows in the Sonoran desert. Like some other subterranean parasitic plants, it only emerges above ground to flower. The fact that the flowering shoots resemble mushrooms seems like a pretty good example of convergent evolution!
I do feel bad for plants in general. Like, I know they are often as vicious as animals in many ways, just slower. But, I mean, they just show up and they’re like, “I Think I Will Evolve To Eat The Sun And Also Make Oxygen And How Now Is All This.” And, like, everything fucking dies at first (totally not plants fault, btw. okay maybe it was but they didn’t mean to) but then new things evolve. And they’re like, “Fuck it, eating each other suuuucks. Let’s eat the plants which give us life.” And so we start doing that. And plants are all, “Oh Dear No, I Do Not Care At All For Being Eaten. I Will Make Myself Into Poison Sometimes.” But, y’know, stuff kept eating plants anyway so plants, ever the bro, came up with a new idea. “I Have Made A Decision About Being Eaten And You May Eat Me Friends And Here Is An Especially Tasty Bit Packed All Full of Delicious Sugars Which I Have Produced At Great Cost (What They Do Not Know Is That My Seeds Are Within And Shall Be Propagated Near And Far By Their Dung)“ But that’s not good enough for animals, no, not at all. We love the fuck out of some pomegranates but also alliums which are like, “I Have Not Decided To Go In For This Being Eaten Business. I Shall Be Very Foul Tasting And Also A Poison.” But no, sorry, onions, you fucked up. You accidentally wound up with a species that just doesn’t give up or fully comprehend the idea of things tasting “”‘bad’“’ or other concepts like not eating poison. (Sorry, plants, later we turn some of you who are not poison into a poison we consume recreationally. We really enjoy eating poison.) Legit, alliums are deadly to, like, every other species. And we call them aromatics and throw them in everything. Peppers are the best, though. They completely got on the being eaten train. BUT ONLY BIRDS Peppers are like, “You May Eat Me, Fair Avian, For You Are Sure To Spread Me A Great Distance. But, Mammal, Take HEED. Should You Eat Me Then I Will Burn You Most Terribly.” And we were all about that. “The FUCK, burning? I love pain,” said humans, presumably. “You know, peppers, you and evolution have done a good job at burning us but I am pretty sure we could make your chemical agony even more potent. Come hang with us,” humans added to a very confused pepper just before creating the ghost chili.
so i learned yesterday that theres a tiny plot at the corn research/breeding nursery i work at thats full of what the breeders call “zoo corn”??? its like. corn that got mutated by accident when they were breeding and they just kept the lines as separate varieties bc its interesting to see and might come in handy some day (it doesn’t get bred into other stuff or developed, just kept in the zoo plot for display). zoo corn includes:
-”bloody butcher corn”: corn that has red streaks all over the ears
-”rainbow corn”: corn plants that are covered in red streaks
-”glass corn”: the breeders say this exists but they dont have it at our facilities??? its corn thats normal corn but the yellow pigment in the kernels got mutated, so the kernels are literally just translucent
-”lazy corn”: corn plants with the protein that helps keep them upright mutated so they grow straight and then when they reach adulthood, they bend all the way over in graceful arcs. like they’re perfectly fine they’re just having a good time on the ground
-”hosta corn”: its corn but its short and bushy and has square stems instead of round stems
i love my mutated corn babs they are beautiful and good
okay so a lot of people have been asking me for pics of the beautiful mutated corn children!!
first of all, hosta corn:
its about 2 feet tall, idk if you can tell from that pic. its also hard to articulate how square the stems are but i did my best:
then, some rainbow corn. turns out that its more than red streaks (before hunting out the plot itself for these pics i had only heard verbal descriptions of these plants!!!)
i have no idea what this is but he got pretty yellow streaks???
finally, lazy corn. turns out these are not the graceful creatures i was imagining and are actually hilarious
thats. thats what a row of lazy corn looks like??? like they’re actually not dying (except the one on the far left that flopped into the alley and got walked on a little)????? they’re just??? perfectly happy plants just having a great time on the ground???????????????????????????? guys i cant do this
Aquatic plants buried underground for more than a century can be revived and regrown, according to a new study investigating the phenomenon of ‘ghost ponds’ – ponds that aren’t properly drained but filled in with soil and vegetation under agricultural land.
Restoring some of these buried ponds, and the habitats hidden in limbo beneath the soil, could be a valuable way of reversing habitat and biodiversity losses, say researchers, and we could even bring some plant species back from the dead.
The team from University College London in the UK has dug out three ghost ponds so far and estimates there could be as many as 600,000 similar patches spread out across the English countryside.
“We have shown that ghost ponds can be resurrected, and remarkably wetland plants lost for centuries can be brought back to life from preserved seeds,” says lead researcher Emily Alderton.
They’re lovely, but they MUST be kept in a pot, or a raised bed, or on a good-quality leash with a chest harness, because mint and its cousins spread like… IDEK, like a rash. Like dandelions. They’re tough, hardy and highly motivated. Even a tiny root fragment will suddenly turn into a Mint Tree if you don’t tear it up. I swear I’ve seen new plants popping up from BURIED SCRAPS OF LEAF. Once they’re in the ground they establish a beachhead and spawn secretly, possibly through osmosis. I cannot advise you to stick a mint plant in the ground unless you are a bold and unconventional disciplinarian.
The joke is that after running around after the mint like a spaniel chasing a whack-a-mole for a year, Dr Glass then planted a plant that would do the same thing.
Great plants, hard to kill, keep them in a pot (ESPECIALLY where invasive)
I would really recommend against planting mint in raised beds, and also, if in a pot, DO NOT PUT THE POT ON SOIL. The pot needs to be on rock or concrete. Otherwise the roots will head straight for freedom through the drainage holes, and you will Never Be Free.
of course, on the other hand, if you’re at all inclined to pettiness expressed via herbology, mint makes a GREAT vehicle for plant-based vengeance.
i have absolutely thrown mint roots into the perfectly manicured lawns of people i hate.
An ever growing mint plant appearing in my lawn would seem like the opposite of a problem to me?
They’re invasive, which means if they’re anywhere in your garden or manicured areas they could ruin the other plants, I think? But yeah I’d love to have a damn mint plant in my yard sounds ideal.
Has anyone ever thought of just having a lawn of mint instead of grass? Like how you have moss lawns?
… I am not judging!! but I don’t think the people in the notes who are like “oh a mint lawn would be lovely!” have met mint!
You know what would be a lovely herbal lawn? Chamomile. Because it’s a damn compact, densely-growing, hardy, winter-green perennial that’s springy underfoot, smells nice when you walk on it, and has some basic manners. Lawn chamomile is plushy and soft and produces tiny pretty daisy-looking flowers. It naturally stays at pretty much the height you would want grass to be, and then you can cut it and it goes “fair enough.”
Mint is not any of those things. Mint is leggy, patchy, muddy and rampageous. It grows randomly and fitfully. It bullies other plants. It sends runners into the neighbor’s houses and across the street and it barks at the postman. Your mint lawn would look like a poorly tended graveyard AND THEN IN THE WINTER IT WOULD DIE, DRAMATICALLY, and ROT THERE. It would outcompete native plants and eat your vegetable garden alive. It is so wet and stalky that it would be dreadful to trim, and when you trimmed it, it would scab over and sulk. It would refuse to grow where it was put (the lawn) and would instead show up in places you don’t want it (the patio, the sidewalk, your intrusive thoughts.) IT IS AN INVASIVE PLANT, WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS TO YOUR FAMILY
It’s like asking why people don’t make lawns out of cabbages, or hyenas, or the cold virus. BECAUSE THEN IT WOULDN’T BE A LAWN OR A GARDEN
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