I remember when a Century Plant just sprouted in my back yard. In the span of a month, it grew 8 meters. It looks very alien in the process.
[0]: https://imgur.com/gallery/what-kind-of-plant-is-this-grew-le...
Some Unusual Trees
61–70 of 94 posts
Re: Some Unusual Trees
#62I expected and wanted tree data structures.
Then you want Foundations of Multidimensional and Metric Data Structures by Samet. Unless you already have it, then enjoy some pretty (organic) trees.
Re: Some Unusual Trees
#63Since we're talking trees. Only trees that grow in an area with distinct warm/cold cycles have rings, tropical trees don't and the only way to tell the age of most tropical trees is to have planted it yourself
Palms and Bamboo are technically "very big weeds". They are more related with grasses than with pines and never have rings. Bananas are also just giant herbs.
So Monocots don't have rings. Anything else that is a tree in a tropical forest has rings. It does not matter where they grow. The rings are smaller in slow growing species, and are different structurally in conifers, but this is all.
Re: Some Unusual Trees
#64I remember when a Century Plant just sprouted in my back yard. In the span of a month, it grew 8 meters. It looks very alien in the process. [0]: https://imgur.com/gallery/what-kind-of-plant-is-this-grew-le...
That was a flower bloom. Also not a tree.
Re: Some Unusual Trees
#65I was in Brazil for the first time last year and was very impressed with the trees. Two examples right from downtown São Paulo, https://kenschutte.com/lima-to-rio-by-bus/images/trees.jpg
Just to point, but those are not native from Brazil. It's a popular decorative tree, but you won't find them on the wild.
This is a Ficus tree. Is one of the common genus of trees also in the Brazilian rainforest. Some are native. Other not.
Re: Some Unusual Trees
#66The traveller tree looked the most interesting, like a peacock's feather. https://www.indefenseofplants.com/blog/2017/12/12/the-travel...
Big herb. Not really a woody plant.
Re: Some Unusual Trees
#67One of my favorite trees is Couroupita guianensis, known by a few other names (ayahuma, cannonball tree). When mature the trunks grow some beautiful flowers that can cover the trunk (wiki link has a few good pics). Native to South America, it's a revered tree in Amazonian plant shamanism (all parts of the plant can be used medicinally; spiritually it is one of the big ones, an entire school of its own). It made its w…
Superb flowers but very dangerous to stay under the cannonball tree.
Re: Some Unusual Trees
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
All I know about them is they're bad railroad ties, and they explode. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpH9gBsNEwI
True. Although in their native Australia they grew quite straight. It's the introduced trees that grow not so straight and make bad railroad ties. In areas where they are introduced, they also become quite invasive by practicing something called alelopathy, whereby they introduce toxins into the soil to prevent competing tree species from taking hold. While I'm at it, Eucalyptus trees have very very dense wood which…
> While I'm at it, Eucalyptus trees have very very dense wood which means the wood burns very hot. This makes it even worse for forest fires where Eucalyptus trees dominate.
Forgive my ignorance, but I had understood the density of the wood meaning that the trunks of the trees were less likely to burn in a forest fire (which eucalypts encourage by shedding large amounts of dry bark)
Re: Some Unusual Trees
#69As an unusual tree I’ve always liked the Dawn Redwood, Metasequoia glyptostroboides. It was known only from fossil record and thought extinct until a small grove was found in a mountain valley in China in 1946. There was a wave of popularity and a bunch were planted worldwide, which are now mature and easy to find if you want to see one. They grow well and very quickly in cool to temperate climates. They have little…
There are lots of "mature" dawn redwood trees in Princeton NJ - particularly in a specific neighborhood built in the 50s.
It makes sense now that the species was discovered in the 40s
Re: Some Unusual Trees
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, no, what we're saying here is that if you use a rigid, hierarchical catergorisation system (cladistics) you can say that there is no such monophyletic grouping as a fish. Ie there is no grouping with a common ancestor that encompasses all the things, and only the things, that we commonly call fish. That system hasn't failed, it's fine, its purpose is to categorise things in terms of evolutionary descent. Howeve…
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think humans are reptiles, phylogenetically. The Synapsida (containing mammals) and Sauropsida (containing reptiles) are sibling groups inside the Amniota.
AFAIK - Synapsida were originally termed mammal-like reptiles before the Amniota group was applied.