Do plants die of old age though? Now that question has been put in my head, I need to know.
Be back in a bit, going down a rabbit hole.
Given the right conditions, some plants can live indefinitely. Others die shortly after seeding.
There’s a bristlecone pine tree in the White Mountains of California that is nearly 5000 years old.
Depends how you look at it. If you keep raising off-shoots from cuttings, you are essentially producing extensions of the very same plant and you can do that indefinitely. Think about it like cloning: an individual plant will eventually die, but it’s clone will survive and can still propagate.
Plants are not biologically immortal like some lobsters for example.
Tell me more about these lobsters
Chromosomes are essentially packages of DNA and each end of a chromosome is extended by a protein called telomere, essentially sequences of “junk data” that protect the actual data (the DNA) from degradation or randomly fusing with other chromosomes. When cells split to renew, these telomeres are not fully copied to the new cell and thus shorten with each split. When they get too short, cells cannot split anymore, so there is a natural end to the renewal process (the so-called Hayflick limit).
Lobsters possess an enzyme called telomerase which can repair telomeres and thus their cells can, in theory, divide indefinitely. They will still die naturally tho due to diseases or growing too large to sustain their body size and die of malnutrition, but they don’t age the way we do.
That was super interesting, thanks for the response
Vine plants are especially weird.
So… Do they?
Should we send someone after him?
Dammit, this is why you always secure your lifeline before entering the Rabbit Hole
You gotta tell us some fun things you learned!
Subscribe to plant facts
wait until you get to the part about the Ginkgo tree
It is the horseshoe crab of trees
I love talking with kids in that phase. The raw curiosity and interest in the mundane is so refreshing.
Sometimes I feel like many adults hate to learn new stuff and even get offended by the idea. It’s heartbreaking seeing those interact with inquisitive children, when they answer honest curiosity with indifference or worse anger.
Kids can be annoying sometimes, especially if you let them live in your house
This is why I choose not to have kids. Actually because current state of affairs and their like a boat anchor to freedom.
I like it when they are circling a question where the answer is "Nobody knows yet.’ And when they get there I can hit 'em with the finishing move, “Maybe you’ll be the first person to find out!”
Hooks them every time.
my kid has been teaching me shit constantly. either by having facts about animals i didn’t know before (which i have checked and verified) or asking me questions where my answer was “i don’t know, let’s look it up”.
i was always a curious person myself and constantly asked questions as a kid as well, but as you grow up you sometimes take things for granted and forget to ask why something is the way it is or how it came to be so. now my kid looks at the world with fresh eyes and asks questions i haven’t asked, so we can both learn. it’s awesome.
reminds me of the monologue that woman delivers in Love Death and Robots episode Pop Squad.
There’s a science article that investigated why the Brits discuss the weather? I’m now mildly curious to know their methodology and conclusions…
I like that it’s a foregone conclusion, not just weather or not they do.
It is? I hadn’t the foggiest!
they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea
I still think mechanical watches are a pretty neat idea. I also never forget my towel so there’s some hope for me yet.
I like this reference.
Sociology
It’s like being subscribed to a toddler in the “why” phase.
because you shook your neurons…
there wouldnt be tides
they lose a bit of energy every time they bounce
some do some dont
because their weather is awful go to sleep right now timmy im losing my patience.
Literally all of the questions can be answered by a smart little 12 year old.
But it’s the target audience (people who might subscribe to BBC notifications) as smart as a little 12 year old?
That second one may do a lot more than just no tides. The planet may not be habitable without the moon. I don’t remember the specific details right now, but those tides have something to do with levelling out our weather patterns.
If BBC Science Magazine was texting me at 1.29am to ask “Why do the British talk about the weather so much?”, BBC Science Magazine and I would be having words - especially if they texted me six hours later to ask about plants!
No. Not this time. It’s fiction. We made it up. This one was invented by a writer. We got you. It never happened.
You’re right. A similar event took place. Yes, it was. You were correct. It’s fact. This one took place. Right again. A similar story happened to a young man in the Pacific northwest about twenty years ago. Yes.
Yeah, he thought it was a different kind of BBC notifications. ಠ◡ಠ
Big black co… corporation?
