OH WOW THESE ARE WONDERFUL THANK YOU FOR TAGGING ME!
Everyone in the notes going “oh no this is so cursed! What tree grows fruit out of the trunk?” Y’all ain’t gonna like how Cacao (the fruit chocolate is derived from) grows:
my botany professor: cork is harvested from the tree Quercus suber,most commonly in spain and portugal. the cork comes from the thick outer bark the tree produces; harvests are very technical and have to be done by hand, because removing all the bark without harming the tree is very intuition-based and can’t be accomplished via machine. instead, teams of highly skilled workers are tasked with using axes to carefully harvest the bark. it grows back completely in 10-15 years, whereupon the next harvest can take place. the trees can live up to 200 years and can undergo over 10 harvests in their lifetimes
me: hehee,,,…..the trees are nakey
nakey
(ID: partially stripped cork trees. they look nakey. end ID)
This adorable little robot is designed to make sure its photosynthesising passenger is well taken care of. It moves towards brighter light if it needs, or hides in the shade to keep cool. When in the light, it rotates to make sure the plant gets plenty of illumination. It even likes to play with humans.
Oh, and apparently, it gets antsy when it’s thirsty.
The robot is actually an art project called “Sharing Human Technology with Plants” by a roboticist named Sun Tianqi. It’s made from a modified version of a Vincross HEXA robot, and in his own words, its purpose is “to explore the relationship between living beings and robots.”
this is Nepenthes ampullaria, and they actually do this! they sit on the forest floor and eat leaf litter that falls into their pitchers, making them technically detritivores from our petty human meat-eating point of view.
the face of cannibalism
These are SO CUTE
Yeah it’s wild I mean technically plants already “feed on detritus” I guess, but they wait for those nutrients to integrate with the soil. This plant evolved to catch insects for extra nutrients, then stumbled onto the fact that it could just catch EVEN FRESHER DIRT instead.
I’ve heard anecdotes that staghorn ferns in the wild might do something similar but I can’t find much about that??
Pre-dirt dirt!
i didn’t even consider this…..pre-dirt dirt……what do i do with this information…..
