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Root System Drawings
- kaamilcado 1y ago[flagged]
- mellosouls 1y agoNice link, for anybody coming to the comments first, it isn't a sample of linux system layouts as I thought.
- perihelions 1y agoI thought it'd be about Lie groups! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_system
- joshdavham 1y agoThe context of HN is interesting. We see the word “root” and immediately assume it has to do with a filesystem or math… but not actual, physical roots haha
- userbinator 1y agoI thought it'd be about the superuser account.
- cynicalsecurity 1y agoNot what I expected, but this is really cool.
- hagbard_c 1y agoWho'd'a'thought I'd come across root drawings from my old university where I studied at the Forestry faculty which produced these.
- bookofjoe 1y agoHN is like Forrest Gump's box of chocolates: you never know what you might get!
- daemonologist 1y agoHow are these produced? I assume they're not actually digging a giant trench and taking a section, but are the drawings based on measurements of a specific individual in some way? In any case, very cool to have such a collection.
- throwup238 1y agoThey usually are. It’s a process akin to archaeology where they have to carefully wash away the dirt from the root system, measuring as they go. The problem with this method is that it's hard to reconstruct the entire 3d structure of bigger plants like trees so a lot of the root drawings on the site don’t accurately show how deep they go. It’s much easier with small plants where the researcher can control the soil used. Modern methods like xray CT or ground penetrating radar can do it nondestructively in the field but they’re usually expensive to set up compared to just sending some grad students to dig.
- JKCalhoun 1y agoI had assumed they had grown the plant between two vertical, parallel panes of glass.
- imp0cat 1y agoThat would probably produce a distorted image of the root system.
- immibis 1y agoOn the contrary - I think you'd get an accurate image of a very distorted root system!
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> you'd get an accurate image of a very distorted root system At the very least, you've taken a 3D system and reduced it to 2D. Additionally, you're exposing not only the root system but the entire microbiome around them to light and, almost certainly, unless you were incredibly meticulous about sealing, oxygen.
- alienbaby 1y agoreminds me alot of patterns from diffusion limited aggregation.
- thirtygeo 1y agoReally neat. I've often wondered about what the unexposed part of trees and plants are. Like: am I walking on them? Are they tapping down somewhere deep or are they shallow. The examples on a hill were interesting; I would have thought the extent would be skewed but it was fairly even
- Arch-TK 1y agoFor plants, and trees too I guess, you can just grow your own, dig it up after a while, and inspect for yourself. Today I finished picking tomatoes from my tomato plants and pulled them up to avoid them rotting in the field as the temperature goes down. It was curious to see how the root systems varied both between the two tomato varieties I had planted, the location of the plant in relation to surrounding grass, and the type of soil they ended up in.
- Sponge5 1y agoRecently there was an exhibition of tree root illustrations by Jitka Klimesova in Prague. I think there's potential for more art emerging from science.
- 29athrowaway 1y agoFrom the perspective of a plant... In soil, you have: silt, clay and sand. Plus other plants, fungi, worms, microorganisms, rocks, insects, animals, etc. Each plant needs different nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and others), need different pH levels, can tolerate different salinity, etc. There might be different humidity, precipitation, wind speed, the water tables are different... I guess all these differences translate into how the root must structurally develop to satisfy all those requirements and constraints.
- joshdavham 1y agoI like to think of a plant’s roots as an analogy for the knowledge required to create something. As a weird example, a web app may be like the exposed plant above ground while the roots are that developer’s knowledge. The plant is what others see, but the roots are the intricate system that was required to create the plant.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- emil-lp 1y agoPreviously 71 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39974646 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39974646 16 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29672733 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29672733 18 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29672733 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29672733
- JohnHaugeland 1y agoi thought these were nervous systems until i started reading comments
- zkmon 1y agoWow. What did I just see? Wonderful and so satisfying. Interesting to see that some plants are tiny above ground compared to their existence below ground - plant-cartels :) I always suspected that rivers are like trees - they also might have a hierarchy of streams (root system) inside the sea. Sometimes this root system is exposed to above "ground" in the form of deltas and streams around them.
- vool 1y agoThere's a Mastodon bot for that... https://stefanbohacek.online/@roots https://stefanbohacek.online/@roots
- skrebbel 1y agoEver thought you yanked a dandelion out by the entire root? Think again: https://images.wur.nl/digital/collection/coll13/id/676/rec/3 https://images.wur.nl/digital/collection/coll13/id/676/rec/3
- fragmede 1y agono wonder the damned things keep coming back!
- loandbehold 1y agoThat's where glyphosate comes in handy.
- alphan0n 1y agoThe cancer was worth it to rid ourselves of a mildly offensive flower.
- 0_____0 1y agoI reckon you could skip spraying it if you were going to eat it anyway. Did you know that wheat in the US is sprayed with glyphosate right before harvest? It causes all the wheat to dry evenly, avoiding the need to cut down the wheat and windrow it for drying. This means extra weeks in the growing season to squeeze another crop in.
- garbagewoman 1y agoHow would you squeeze another crop in?
- tracker1 1y agoBy planting one after harvesting the wheat...
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- unit149 1y agoBonatical plant systems that are lateral or burrow as this vertical way, which as the cross section for water collection is organic rorschach print.
- octol 1y agoImagine if there were a consciousness in each of those complex systems.
- Evidlo 1y agoWas thinking about vectorizing these and using a pen plotter to make some cool art for my wall, but the images are not very high resolution, unfortunately :(
- veeti 1y agoI've been doing some small scale basil growing at home using kratky hydroponics in glass jars. It's always interesting to check how the roots have grown and expanded overnight.
- kjellsbells 1y agoNaive question, possibly poorly formed: what is the purpose of the parts of the plant? Eg the leaves are for collecting energy and the flower for reproduction...so is the "thing" that all that work is going to benefit really just the root stem?
- Woberto 1y agoIsn't reproduction the point? The roots exist to obtain water, nutrients, minerals; leaves gather energy from the sun; this is used to grow fruit, or whatever is used for reproduction
- brianpan 1y agoThe answer to pretty much every biological "why" question is: because it reproduced. It seems simplistic, but really, a thing is here and alive because its ancestors reproduced. Your version of the question has surprising perspective- I think you are asking what the "it" of the plant is. That's an interesting personification of a plant. I think it points to the fact that plants may be safer underground- for anchoring, for not being eaten, for getting shielded from harsh elements.
- ofalkaed 1y agoDigging up and drawing the root systems of plants might be my dream job, I love digging, plants, and slow methodical tedious work. Anyone hiring? Pinus sylvestris[0] and Quercus robur[1] are good entries with numerous examples to compare. I would love to see a photograph of the exposed roots of their Sequoiadendron giganteum. [0] https://images.wur.nl/digital/collection/coll13/search/searchterm/Pinus%20sylvestris https://images.wur.nl/digital/collection/coll13/search/searc... [1] https://images.wur.nl/digital/collection/coll13/search/searchterm/Quercus%20robur https://images.wur.nl/digital/collection/coll13/search/searc...
- nelliottca 1y agojust start
- kisonecat 1y agoI was expecting diagrams of a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_system (There are so many plant metaphors in mathematics!)
- boguscoder 1y agoI expected *nix file system diagrams of some sort :) but this might be even better
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- gsf_emergency_4 1y agoAnother try at seeing root systems: https://doc.sagemath.org/html/en/reference/combinat/sage/combinat/root_system/plot.html https://doc.sagemath.org/html/en/reference/combinat/sage/com...
- macrolocal 1y agoNb. This isn't about Lie theory.
- yrro 1y agoThe accursed bindweed: https://images.wur.nl/digital/collection/coll13/id/193/rec/1 https://images.wur.nl/digital/collection/coll13/id/193/rec/1
- sfpotter 1y agoCame here expecting Dynkin diagrams, got dandelions instead.
- marking-time 1y agoLove this
- doka_smoka 1y ago[dead]