The secret to vascular plants success is in their defining trait: conductive tissues that can take food and water from one part of a plant to another part of a plant. This may sound simple enough, but the ability to move stuff from one part of an organism to another was a HUGE evolutionary breakthrough for vascular plants. It allowed them to grow exponentially larger, store food for lean times, and develop some fancy features that allowed them to spread farther and faster. It was one of the biggest revolutions in the history of life on Earth. The result? Plants dominated Earth long before animals even showed up. And even today, they hold most of the world records: The largest organism in the world is a redwood in Northern California, 115 meters tall. Bigger than 3 blue whales laid end to end. The most massive organism is a grove of quaking aspen in Utah, all connected by the roots, weighing a total of 13 million pounds. And the oldest living thing? A patch of seagrass in the Mediterranean dating back 200,000 years. Weve spent a lot of time congratulating ourselves on how awesomely magnificent and complex the human animal is, but plants beat humans out millions of years ago. youtu.be/h9oDTMXM7M8
Posted on: Sun, 07 Dec 2014 04:17:57 +0000
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