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Precisely. I think this has been on HN before, or if not then another “Wow you’re gonna be surprised by this — trees aren’t monophyletic!” article. Given all th

Precisely. I think this has been on HN before, or if not then another “Wow you’re gonna be surprised by this — trees aren’t monophyletic!” article. Given all the surprising examples of convergent evolution, and given human tendencies to give vernacular names to paraphyletic groups, and given that it’s obviously easy for plant lineages to increase or decrease the woodiness of their stems, it is baffling that anyone would think it surprising that “trees” aren’t monophyletic.

camtarn 5y ago
'Anyone'? Really? I think you massively overestimate how much general knowledge about biology people have. For a lot (I would reckon most, but obviously I have no evidence of that) of people, terms like 'paraphyletic' are literally not in their vocabulary.
- da39a3ee 5y ago
  Yeah, no, fair enough. I didn't mean that people would express it in that terminology, or appreciate the distinction between paraphyly and polyphyly! What I'm trying to say is: anyone who has ever poked around in some wild vegetation (even as a kid) knows that "normal plants" vary quite a bit in their woodiness. There are little ones, and sort of stiff little ones, and then there are "shrubs". I think most people here have the nous to think at this point "wtf's a shrub?" and 'I am doubting that "shrub" is actually a real thing'. Hence, by extension, tree? They are just sort of big stiff things aren't they?
  - camtarn 5y ago
    Perhaps I'm just on the low end of botanical curiosity, but I wouldn't ever have made that leap myself. If you'd asked my younger self 'what is a shrub?' I would have said 'uh, like a small bush?'. It would never have occurred to me to pursue the thought any further: my mind interfaced well with mechanical and electrical and computational things, and not at all with living things! I'd just about struggled through introductory Biology at school but was never particularly interested in it. So - yes, if you'd asked me whether all trees had a single woody ancestor, I would probably have said yes. I'd come across the idea of convergent evolution in animals before, but at least convergently evolved animals were really obviously different. Trees were obviously all the same thing: big trunk, some branches, green bits on the end. Some of them were coniferous and some deciduous, but I would have guessed that was a far-back ancestral split. I had no idea that tree ferns even existed! Anyway, the conclusion of this very rambling story is that I started dating an horticulturist and rapidly learned an enormous number of mind-melting facts about plant biology. But I still remember knowing absolutely nothing.
    - da39a3ee 5y ago
      > If you'd asked my younger self 'what is a shrub?' I would have said 'uh, like a small bush?' Would your younger self have felt that one could always decide whether something was a bush or a tree?
      - camtarn 5y ago
        Yeah, definitely. Tree: big tall thing with a thick trunk. Bush: little round thing. Younger me was very confidently wrong sometimes ;)

camtarn 5y ago

'Anyone'? Really? I think you massively overestimate how much general knowledge about biology people have. For a lot (I would reckon most, but obviously I have no evidence of that) of people, terms like 'paraphyletic' are literally not in their vocabulary.

da39a3ee 5y ago
Yeah, no, fair enough. I didn't mean that people would express it in that terminology, or appreciate the distinction between paraphyly and polyphyly! What I'm trying to say is: anyone who has ever poked around in some wild vegetation (even as a kid) knows that "normal plants" vary quite a bit in their woodiness. There are little ones, and sort of stiff little ones, and then there are "shrubs". I think most people here have the nous to think at this point "wtf's a shrub?" and 'I am doubting that "shrub" is actually a real thing'. Hence, by extension, tree? They are just sort of big stiff things aren't they?
- camtarn 5y ago
  Perhaps I'm just on the low end of botanical curiosity, but I wouldn't ever have made that leap myself. If you'd asked my younger self 'what is a shrub?' I would have said 'uh, like a small bush?'. It would never have occurred to me to pursue the thought any further: my mind interfaced well with mechanical and electrical and computational things, and not at all with living things! I'd just about struggled through introductory Biology at school but was never particularly interested in it. So - yes, if you'd asked me whether all trees had a single woody ancestor, I would probably have said yes. I'd come across the idea of convergent evolution in animals before, but at least convergently evolved animals were really obviously different. Trees were obviously all the same thing: big trunk, some branches, green bits on the end. Some of them were coniferous and some deciduous, but I would have guessed that was a far-back ancestral split. I had no idea that tree ferns even existed! Anyway, the conclusion of this very rambling story is that I started dating an horticulturist and rapidly learned an enormous number of mind-melting facts about plant biology. But I still remember knowing absolutely nothing.
  - da39a3ee 5y ago
    > If you'd asked my younger self 'what is a shrub?' I would have said 'uh, like a small bush?' Would your younger self have felt that one could always decide whether something was a bush or a tree?
    - camtarn 5y ago
      Yeah, definitely. Tree: big tall thing with a thick trunk. Bush: little round thing. Younger me was very confidently wrong sometimes ;)