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How was this captured? I mean they are just drawing but they seem relativly new. I'd kinda guess they were lab grown with some sort of imaging on the 2 sides,
by w-ll 3y ago
How was this captured? I mean they are just drawing but they seem relativly new.
I'd kinda guess they were lab grown with some sort of imaging on the 2 sides, but they are 2d drawings.
Did they really dig them up and and map them out... Maybe water them with a fluorescent dye to get depth info...
Super curious.
- GauntletWizard 3y agoThey're pen drawings, done by hand. Most of the history of Botany was done this way - Drawings by skilled artists, using life samples painstakingly removed from the soil, as was most of the history of biology and physiology. You can grow plants specifically for this purpose, using less dense soil so that you can more easily extract the root system without damaging it.
- Tempest1981 3y agoImagine the patience required, first to wait years until the roots are established, then painstakingly unearth them.
- yreg 3y agoWouldn't the soil density affect the root system?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pvaldes 3y agoYes. There aren't two root systems identical. I assume that this plants were cultured in a sandy or hydroponic mix. But the main goal is the generalization and to know how long roots can grow. For trees they wanted to know also if roots can grow up the hill against gravity (they do it all the time). This is useful to understand how stable is the structure and how useful to fix soil in place and fix erosion processes. The dune melon root is particularly funny. You can almost hear the root sniffing water right and left in the Namibian desert
- FredPret 3y agoMy initial ideas were injecting the tree with a chemical and zapping it with radar, and growing it hydroponically in translucent gravel. But this seems wildly impractical. They probably just have a team of students dig them up with a brush, one layer of soil at a time.
- barbazoo 3y agoI imagine that too. How would you map the root system of a tree. Can’t grow a tree in the lab. (Someone’s gonna reply with a link where someone grew a tree in a lab but you know what I mean)
- bcraven 3y agohttps://www.ediblegeography.com/rootstock-archaeology/ https://www.ediblegeography.com/rootstock-archaeology/ There's some detail here about how British researchers developed apple tree rootstocks, including photos of whole trees that have been excavated and reassembled. Couple it with this documentary: https://docuwiki.net/index.php?title=Apples:_British_to_the_Core https://docuwiki.net/index.php?title=Apples:_British_to_the_...
- anitil 3y agoThere's a computerphile video [0] that looks at one way people take 3d x-rays to look at plant roots (I haven't re-watched it yet so unsure if it's related to the article) Edit: Look at about 6:50 in the video for a render of a root system. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qrl__J4vYok https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qrl__J4vYok
- andrewflnr 3y agoWith the gravel thing, you wouldn't necessarily even get the same structure as in the wild. Plants can grow to fit their surroundings.
- shellfishgene 3y agoAren't all the drawings just one 2d slice? You would just have to cut the soil in a line through the plant with a sharp spade and remove enough on one side to make the drawing.