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Plants can grow quickly or accurately, but not both
- thdrdt 6y agoWhat about bamboo? Grows fast grows straight.
- soperj 6y agoSame with the Empress Tree.
- xahrepap 6y agoI love my empress tree! Once the roots were established the thing grows beautifully. It blew over this year (3 years worth of growth). Several of the shoots also blew over. Finally one shoot survived the harsh winds we get occasionally and it’s already ~7-8 feet tall. and the leaves. They look like something from Jurassic park. They’re HUGE!
- quixoticelixer- 6y agoIt's not really a fair comparison since it doesn't need anything to grow on to and growing straight up isn't that hard.
- dmitriid 6y ago- There are bound to be exceptions until a more general rule is found, or - this is slow speed for bamboo, so it can be sped up even more (at loss of accuracy), or - some combination of both :)
- Cerium 6y agoFor bamboo you see the fast part, but not the slow part. The shoots are prepared over a number of months where all the nodes are made underground. Then when it is ready the space between the nodes is added causing the very fast telescoping action.
- warent 6y agoYour description makes bamboo sound like some kind of fascinating alien technology/ organism, I love it.
- zinekeller 6y agoJapan agrees! (or at least their folktale story does) [1] 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tale_of_the_Bamboo_Cutter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tale_of_the_Bamboo_Cutte...
- dsabanin 6y agoInteresting. They're kind of like code in that sense.
- yipbub 6y agoOrganic
- Gys 6y ago> How are plants, with no advanced nervous system, able to gather information about their environment to guide their behavior, planning and flexibly executing movement? Sound, maybe. Or chemoreception. Possibly even eye-like structures. 'eye-like structures'?! https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tplants.2016.07.008 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tplants.2016.07.008: Although plants are sessile organisms, almost all of their organs move in space and thus require plant-specific senses to find their proper place with respect to their neighbours. Here we discuss recent studies suggesting that plants are able to sense shapes and colours via plant-specific ocelli. Cannot access the study but this sounds fascinating!
- generalizations 6y agoHere you go: https://sci-hub.se/https://www.cell.com/trends/plant-science/fulltext/S1360-1385(16)30093-0?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS1360138516300930%3Fshowall%3Dtrue https://sci-hub.se/https://www.cell.com/trends/plant-science...
- diggan 6y agoNot sure if others have the same problem, but where I live (Spain), sci-hub.se is unavailable. sci-hub.st still works though, so mirror is here: https://sci-hub.st/https://www.cell.com/trends/plant-science/fulltext/S1360-1385(16)30093-0 https://sci-hub.st/https://www.cell.com/trends/plant-science...
- jraph 6y agosci-hub.se works here (France), however sci-hub.tw does not load anymore. I'll say that if neither sci-hub.se nor sci-hub.st load on your connection, they are probably blocked for legal reasons at your place and you should of course neither attempt to switch to another DNS server nor put the following text in your /etc/hosts file to make them resolve: 186.2.163.219 sci-hub.se 186.2.163.201 sci-hub.st See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20606718 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20606718 for more information.
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- jszymborski 6y agoInterestingly, the same is true for mammals. Mammalian cells have contingencies to maintain the growth/accuracy balance, but sometimes the accelerator is hit so hard that it blows through the checks and balances and becomes a tumour. The further the checks and balances are corrupted, the more likely that organism is likely to become a malignant cancer.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- blkknightarms 6y agoFlora uncertainty principle
- pvaldes 6y agoEqual peas with all the kingdom plantae leads to this misunderstandings. Plants can grow fast AND accurately. Ask a bamboo, or a grass
- jonplackett 6y agoI think the more interesting thing in this article is about how plants can somehow decide whether to grow faster or slower depending if they’re trying to reach a certain type of support, without having a central nervous system.
- mschuster91 6y agoThe most fascinating plant for me is forced rhubarb - it grows so quickly when it only has a candle light, that you can hear it growing: http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20190424-the-english-vegetable-picked-by-candlelight http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20190424-the-english-vegetab...
- ineedasername 6y ago"Generally, our actions are subject to a speed-accuracy trade-off: the faster you do something, the less accurate you tend to be" And interesting edge-case where that isn't true are professional athletes. Maybe in the plant world the equivalent would be kudzu [0]. It has the speed thing down without issue, and as for accuracy... well, you grow like it does, you're hitting every target. It's about as close to a sci-fi gray goo scenario as we get, or the monster movie "The Blob", and one of the the prescribed methods of dealing with it is actually "kill it with fire!" [0] https://www.appalachiabare.com/when-stephen-king-turned-into-a-plant-the-old-villain-kudzu/ https://www.appalachiabare.com/when-stephen-king-turned-into...
- op03 6y agoI don't know if athletes fit. They spend their whole day in training to stay accurate. And thanks for the cool kudzu article!
- ineedasername 6y agoThey spend their whole day in training to stay accurate That's what I mean-- for some, there's a way to overcome the speed-accuracy trade-off with extreme effort. And yeah, kudzu is crazy. I remember seeing it in the south (US) when I had family there as a kid and thinking "wow, that place must have been abandoned like 50 years ago". Then I found out about kudzu not long ago & was amazed.
- eusebius 6y agoKudzu is certainly incredible, but other invasive species in the southeast US (where I live ) are nearly as impressive. Wisteria comes to mind; it's not as obvious until it's in bloom. Other honorable mentions: Chinese privet, Asian Bittersweet, elaeagnus, and English Ivy. All of the aforementioned grow in my yard and their aggressive growth is unbelievable (especially elaeagnus... It's a shrub that can climb like a vine!).
- russianbandit 6y agoSo, the pea grew faster towards a thinner support, but why does that mean it grew less accurate?
- fourthark 6y agoI think the argument was that it’s easier to grasp a thin support, so the pea needs less accuracy. It wasn’t spelled out in the article or its reference, from what I could tell.
- popotamonga 6y agoI once planted a bean a put a webvam taking a timelapse video. Its amazing how much a plant can move in 1hr!