February 21, 2013
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Plants versus the world
The story of plants has always been a favorite of mine. i kind of like the way the whole thing plays out. though i , myself am not a plant aficionado. i get by with recognizing that it has leaves and is rooted in the ground. it works for me. however, the history of plants is probably better then any crusade epic we can hope for in the movies. This is a truth many people are not aware of.
the first thing that should always be mentioned about plants is, well, there would be pretty much notta heck of a lot going on without them. As modern humans we are well aware of the rainforest and its contribution to the perseverance of life on this planet. the oxygen we have is vastly produced by that miraculous spot. though of recent note it has been suggested the amazon one is only around roughly a few hundred thousand years old. however, this occupational tendency of the plants has been found in the fossil record to be even 15million years old in some places of the earth.places we would hardly even expect to find a palm tree or pretty much anything plant wise save a shrub have at times been just as dense as the rainforest.
this minor fact alone brings fascinating revelations about the rainforest we know in our lifetimes. it is a massive group of trees that evolved a strategy after the advent of the mammals and started to mass populate in south America for reasons which remain unknown. As always one cant rule out super volcanoes. they are quite the common feature of the earth. yet at any rate these magnificent lifeforms had somehow preserver where a vast majority didn’t in a relatively short span of time.
with that, one can easily see how the production of oxygen is secondary , considering that about two thirds of life on earth is contained within the confines of this forest.this, is the first huge legacy of plants. they are the anchor for all other life and all of life is in some way connected to plants.
I guess most people would shut the book there and marvel at their philodendron questioning if it needs water. but there is a deeper story. a story of intrigue and drama. when the plants first came on land, roughly just before the devonian. there was literally no valid atmoshpere and no way any animal could survive. it was incredibly hot and well , temperatures had this strange way of dropping real fast at night. the atmosphere of the earth was not like it is today. the sun’s thermal energy would just dissipate into the air and pretty much vanish. it is the way gases work.
plants, some pretty strange looking ones by our standards began their migration on land in a really harsh environment. it wasn’t as stable as the water. but, unique only to plants they have a cell that has a hard wall. literally, like an armor. this is why plants cant bend as easily as we can. this provided an excellent way to survive many things such as the uv radiation from a different atmosphere which existed back then.
they provided a new gas. oxygen and refined impurities from the air as they began their domination. there was a time when the entire earth was pretty much a huge forest. there was absolutely nothing on earth at that time animal wise , on land. it was like this for millions of years too. things were going pretty good for them.
they had found their safety zone. as it was a different story in the oceans. insects and fish and pretty much everything non plant were busy gobbling up any plant matter they could find. in fact, the whole predator/prey thing came about from animals eating plants and predators eating animals that eat plants in order to gain the sustenance that plants offered. so directly or indirectly, all life on earth is dependent and connected to plant life for food and any other additional nourishment.vegetation was the next best thing to sliced bread.
as the dominion of the plants went through its motions, the gases they released began to create a blanket of heavy oxygen and carbon monoxide . this created an as yet unheard of effect. greenhouse. the temperatures stayed relatively stable in the massive forests and the insects, being coldblooded had found their way to get on land. needless to say the exploitation of the new world they encountered was beyond imagining. the battle between insects and plants to this day is probably one of the most complex and strangely harmonic dances of survival between two different life forms.
things went like this heavily till the amphibians and then reptiles came into being.now the real contest began. the dinosaurs were pretty much huge lawnmowers only they could eat pretty much anything plant wise when it came to the plant eaters. the idea we are looking at here is massive groups of plant eaters about the size of a truck or bus even in packs so dense they could be seen as a black shadow on the ground if viewed from a far distance. roving over the landscape and eating every single plant they could find.
we know this because that is why some had long necks, as the ones that were closer to the ground had pretty much cleared out the lower leaves. plants began a strategy that is still in effect today. they realized that poison was hopeless against reptiles because reptiles were quite adaptable and far ranging. so they began to create tannins. which were a unique concept . instead of poison they made the animal think that the plant was not nourishing enough. an example is caffeine. it causes the adrenalin to secrete in the system artificially, which causes lack of concentration and excessive stomach acid to happen. the jerky feeling and highly reactive state causing super stress in the animal. the digestion was hastened by the sped up metabolism and the result was the body just didn’t recognize it as a valid source of food.
this worked magnificently for a long time. but the grass lands had a different tact.
they decided to make them self look different. by applying bright colors and camouflage. they became flowers.
this worked pretty good too for a short while. till insects, like bees began to exploit the ease of recognizing individual plant types by the color spectrum.
the war between plants and animals is full of plot twists and constant balance. but the truth is, without them, just existing. not as food but just existing, life would not exist as it does.
so, hug a tree , they deserve our recognition.