#quillwort

[thebotanicalarcade]

n4_w1150 by Biodiversity Heritage Library Via Flickr: Journal of botany, British and foreign. London :Robert Hardwicke,1863-1942. biodiversitylibrary.org/page/15955410

[melangle]

I've loved quillworts since i learned of thier existence but I've only just learned of tumblrs love of quillworts, they are hard to photograph, I have a degree in Fine Art and 2 weeks from a degree in Conservation Biology and I'm the defacto bryologist of my state* They are hard to photograph, at least in my state , the 9 species in WA overlap alot in habitat and morphology, despite destinct spore ornamentations. *Dm if u disagree I need someone who cares abt moss to talk to

[sailorstrawbs]

What if we kissed beneath the lepidodendron tree?

[reikaniichan]

📙 What kind of subjects (of conversation, of discussion, in school or whatever) does your OC find interesting or engaging or that they can talk for hours about? What kind of stuff do they just find fun? (For Tuss)

tuss: well… i have this lil box of tiny flowers! they’re small and good! i also have these plushes. Tamizi made them! she would tell you they’re lumpy and just ok, but i think they’re wonderful! very soft and huggable. 10/10!! aaaand i could talk about takumi and rei a lot too. they are both a bit shy when it comes to talking about themselves…

takumi (+rei): eh er well!! i-it’s! um! aaaaa

stuff for fun… i doodle small stuff sometimes. i like hanging out with friends and being comfy! and sometimes i flop around..

er. where these two come from? (i don’t mind, but??)

quill: well, you’re comfy to be around too (lol)

[vickysaurus]

(Image, as well as much of my information, from Carboniferous Giants and Mass Extinction by George R. McGhee Jr.)

Take a look at this tree. On a scale of 1 to 10, how weird do you think it is?

You quite possibly just gave it a 3 or a 4 or something. Sure, it's a little odd, but does look vaguely normal, right? A friend of mine guessed it was some sort of baobab when I showed him the image.

This is, in fact Lepidodendron, an ancient tree from the Carboniferous, and by modern tree standards it is absolutely bizarre. Its closest surviving relatives, quillworts and clubmosses, only grow to a height of a few centimetres, yet Lepidodendron were giants that shot up to 50 metres tall... Briefly, before dispersing their spores and completely dying off.

(Lycopodium and Spinulum, modern relatives of Lepidodendron, photos by Bernd Haynold and Pete Pattavina)

You see, Lepidondron lived like a gigantic dandelion. For most of its life, it was a stumpy little thing that stuck close to the ground. Just an odd scaly green stump with some long leaves poking out. The green scales its bark consisted of were the place it conducted its photosynthesis, and thus basically did the work of leaves. The Lepidodendron would stay like this for a couple years, slowly expanding its roots and getting ready for the next step. But its roots would grow mostly horizontally, down not so much! And part of why is that even they had the scaly leaf-like photosynthetic bark. That's right, even their roots could - and to some extend needed to - photosynthesise!

(Fossil Lepidodendron bark in the National Museum of Brazil, photo by Dornicke; a fossilised relative of Lepidodendron with some of its roots visible, photo by Michael C. Rygel)

So why would you ever try to photosynthesise with your roots of all things as a plant? Surely it would make much more sense to just transport the sugars created in other parts there than to have your roots be so shallow that bits of them can catch a little light and make it in situ? Sure, if you're capable of that! This is what modern trees do, but they have two separate vascular tissues they use for transport: xylem, which moves water from the roots to the rest of the plant, and phloem, which moves sugars and other photosynthetic products from the leaves to the rest of the plant. Unfortunately for Lepidodendron, it only had xylem, no phloem, so its sugars were only ever going to move as far as they could diffuse, so every part of the tree needed to have at least a little photosynthesis happening, even the roots.

This truly gets ridiculous when the Lepidodendron decides after a few years of charging up that it's time to reproduce. That's when the weird green stump we have so far starts shooting up, up, up, very quickly, all the way until an enormous 40 or 50 metres in height. Now, modern trees grow this large by being supported by a sturdy wooden core, but that's not what Lepidodendron did. To hold up the entire tree, it relies entirely on its outer bark thickening as it grows. In mechanical terms, it was little more than a huge hollow pole, probably creaking and swaying terribly in the wind. Although I have not been able to confirm this in the literature so far, I suspect that between the shallow roots and the whole thing being held up by its bark, you could probably total a Lepidodendron with a good kick.

Now remember, all this growth is happening without phloem, so the entire length of that stem has to not just be sturdy enough to keep the tree standing, but it also has to keep doing photosynthesis to feed itself. When it reaches its full height, the top of the tree finally starts sprouting branches and small leaves, leaving it looking like the picture at the start. But those are not what it's all about for the tree: the cones that develop among them are. At a height of 50 metres, the spores produced by the cones can very easily be picked up by the wind and blown far, far away. Being spores, rather than seeds as modern trees have, they have no supplies built in whatsoever, so they need to get lucky to land in a spot that has immediate access to water. Luckily, there are a lot of those in the vast Carboniferous swamps, and with the trees doing so much work to spread the spores very widely, some of them are sure to find good spots. And then, with the spores dispersed, the tree is done for. The entire thing, which has just grown to the skies, dies off and soon comes crashing down.

So how weird is this tree? I'd call it a perfect 10.

[joemomrgneissguy]

Horsetails and Moss, a rant

Forgive me if I'm a bit scattered here, but I've got to talk about horsetails. Where I live in the Pacific Northwest, I see these little guys all the time:

They grow everywhere there's water: ditches, rivers, roadsides (through asphalt), gardens, you name it. They grow like crazy, are really hard to get rid of, and every time that I see them I am reminded that these humble weeds were once trees.

They are the last surviving members of the family Equisetaceae which had at one time had such illustrious members as Calamites:

It looks so similar to the little plants today, but it could get up to 160 feet tall! An actual, woody tree that reproduced via spores and had nodal root networks like a plant that has been a never ending nuisance to countless backyard gardeners. These trees were everywhere during the Carboniferous (360-300 mya), and they weren't alone.

This is a member of Lycopodiopsida, a class with such members as clubmosses and quillworts. None of the members today grow all that large, but, much like horsetails, they used to be much taller.

These trees are so well preserved we know a lot about how they grew, what their life cycle was like, what all the different organs they had were. A good bit of that preservation is due to being in swamps, but its also because bacteria which could break down wood DID NOT YET EXIST!

Why?

Because not only were these little guys once trees, they were the first trees ever. They were some of the first to invent wood. So these trees fell over, and then did not rot, because there was nothing on earth that could eat them. They then got compressed, buried, and eventually became coal. This is where the grand majority of our coal supply comes from, that small period of time where nothing knew how to break down wood. It is firewood that has waited 300 million years to be burned, and we are returning carbon to the atmosphere that had once been breathed by giant dragonflies and 8 foot long millipedes.

[willtheweaver]

OC name origins tag

TY for the tag @phoenixradiant @tildeathiwillwrite

I’ll be doing the youngsters from A Feather in the Forest for this one:

Ivy-

This may sound boring, but the reason for me choosing this name is because this is a plant that is common, at least where I live. As a name, it sounds nice, and fits the naming system I created for the story.

Rail-

As I have mentioned, most of the names are derived from nature. Well, there are a few exceptions to this. (In case anyone asks, yes I know about the birds, but it would not make sense for a fox to have a bird based name) The reason for some of these names not fitting in with the rest will have to wait. If I try to explain it, I’d end up spoiling a few things.

Quill-

This is an interesting one. You might expect that I had the inspiration from the quill (feather) of a bird, but I didn’t. Wouldn’t make sense. Instead I sourced this one from the quillwort (a vascular plant of shallow waters, related to club mosses).

Nettle-

Why did I choose this name? Well, the nettle is a fascinating plant. Most people are familiar with getting the sting of the plant, but there is more to it than that. Nettle fiber can be used to make fabric, and the plant has been used for food and medicine.

Leaving this tag open for anyone who wants to join in

[zestyderg]

Hello sir Zest. It is once again him.

The Broccoli man.

He has come to ask you about your idea of plant related vivisaurs, and would also like to propose an idea about them.

If you were to create one what would it be and what element would you give it?

Personally, the broccoli man would create a vivisaur similar to behavior in Tonzilla, but a healer. It would be based of the Prototaxites fungi, be a water elemental, with the only attacking move being Condensation (a move where it fires a high pressure water laser at the enemy). The catch is it would have reeeeaaaalllly high defense, and super cheap (but pretty damn good) team healing powers.

That is all.

-the broccoli man (chaotic evil)🥦

Alright it seems that you already got the giant extinct fungus covered (that was my first choice lmao), and I do like what you got going with it. An absolute wall of a support vivo who can cheaply heal allies and also has great survivability.

I think Lepidodendron would be neat. A tree who's related to modern clubmosses and quillworts, and is known for having scale-like leaf scars on its trunk. It lived during the late Carboniferous and was quite common. I think it'd make a good air or maybe a water type, and is more offensive than Prototaxites. Maybe it would use its cones (like pine cones) to attack, or maybe it'd uproot itself and beat the opponent senseless with its trunk and branches. I'd prefer the latter lmao.

[neverdirtfree]

There are two wolves inside of you .. honestly extremely fair diversion though! I still struggle to comprehend that quillworts reproduce by spores

I always wished you had room to do like a mini dis every year at uni- give me the power to write about the political consequences of increasing seaweed farming!!

I would just like to say that ur lichen advocacy brings so much joy to my heart! As someone who was told to stop writing about lichens or fail an essay (it was a politics module in fairness), it brings me great joy

omg I was also denied lichens as the topic of an essay in college (was supposed to be an essay on a vascular plant family, I tried to bargain by saying i would just do it on algae symbiotes, professor said no, algae isn’t a vascular plant which is fair) so i picked isoetes instead which is really funny in hindsight because like

[melangle]

Quillworts in a gnamma hole in Western Australia

A gnamma hole is a depression formed in granite or other very hard and inert rock that is formed from chemical weathering over millions of years, the name comes from noongar languages of the indigenous peoples of the southwest of Western Australia. Whilst restricted to tiny areas very distantly spaced, Quillworts are relatively easy to find in Western Australia, if you visit the right outcrops at the right time of year you will see them reliably every time.

It is not easy to identify a quillwort to a species in Western Australia without destructively collecting and dissecting a specimen as all the currently described species overlap significanty in morphology depending on growing conditions.

If you want to see a quillwort IRL and are willing to travel to Western Australia let me know because I can provide directions and coordinates or meet IRL because the extreme biodiversity in flowering plants here in SouthWest WA means the little quillworts get overlooked even by the most passionate of botanists.

This gnamma hole was in a ~1.5 billion year old granite bedrock outcropping in Cape Le Grande near Esperance https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/171702188

[adventuresofstybba]

Page 28: The Plot Thickens

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Full image description below the cut.

Stybba and Dandi examine a living fossil- a quillwort (Pleuromeia sternbergii) towering over them at 2 meters tall. The plant flourished in the Early Triassic period and then died out, but here it is happily growing by the shores of the underground sea. This is the first of many incredible discoveries. But the Urchin of Secrecy appears to urge some discretion.

“From here on, it could spoil the book if we share our adventures,” the Urchin says.

“Aww, but we’ve just gotten to the really exciting parts!” Spoiler Fish replies.

“The chapter titles are a given, so you can talk about those!” Urchin suggests.

“OK!” says Spoiler Fish, and gestures to a depiction of an erupting volcano. “So, ‘The Volcanic Shaft’ may be the best-known part of the adventure… but listen to this chapter title: ’Terrific Saurian Combat.’” The Fish wiggles with glee.

Author’s note: It’s true; we’re going to finish wrapping up on A Journey To The Center of The Earth in the next comic, without giving away the end of the book. I hope these pages have given you a fun taste of the story, and added some sparkle to the dryer parts of the plot. Stybba will move on to a new book soon!

[zenosanalytic]

Reply-Reply to Purified-Zone: WWTCLD?

BOTANICAL KNOWLEDGE!!!

[saxifraga-silly]

Sounds like a super fun class! With quillworts and duckweed, you're aure to find some cool stuff. Maybe you can find some other cool lycopodiaceae- i spent a lot of time keying lycopodes over the past 4 mnths and its REALLY fun. They have the best texture. Fun to touch / 10

had my first day of plant systematics today and man. I'm so excited for this class. Day one and I received two pieces of information that blew my socks off in two different ways:

1. We will be going to see Isoetes in the field! and

2. Duckweed (Lemna) is in the freakin' ARACEAE family?!?!? Yknow. Corpse flower and skunk cabbage? Calla lily? Thermogenesis? Stinky? LARGE and in charge? And this is why morphological classification is on such thin fuckin ice. Man. I'm reeling. I love learning new things about plants because they will ALWAYS surprise me.

[every-living-beast]

on behalf of isoetes I’m offended, Mr. Senator. 

[willtheweaver]

WIP world building

Naming conventions among the foxfolk

Among the foxes of the five villages, names are a significant part of one’s identity. Preferences vary to the point that it is said that one can identify the village a stranger was born in based on their name alone. While generally true, this is not a hard and fast rule, as the names of family members often share the same theme, even long after they have moved away from their original home.

A fox is given their name on the day of their birth. Usually it is based on a plant (such as Ivy, Sorrel, or Linden) or a biome (Fen, Steppe, or Taiga). Some names invoke cunning or a trickster (Robin, Puck, Floki, or Renerd), or the color red (Cinnabar, Rust, Rouge). Unique among the foxes whose lineage hails from the village of Silverdeep is choosing names based on rocks, minerals, and gemstones (Opal, Karst, Flint). There are some names whose origins are not known, and are connected to the precursors (Rail, Volt, Valve). As the Great Lake is a place the foxes fear, names based on water are rare, but a few do exist (Playa, Brook, Delta).

Last names are rarely used in daily life, and are usually only brought up when marriage is concerned (incest is a big no-no). Examples of last names include Quillwort, Tor, Longbank, and Wright.

Titles and suffixes can reflect the deeds one did (Freya Lake-runner), their position in society (Opal Tha), a characteristic or trait the individual wishes to convey (Laurel the Steadfast), or a term of endearment (Fen of a thousand stories).

[theradioghost]

curse my anxiety for preventing me from leveraging my terrifying ability to make popular posts into being the kind of person who can get internet strangers to send me model dinosaurs