Fun plant facts

It’s a little off topic - I don’t really have any plant facts to share for your yearbook.

But since you’re based in Germany, are you familiar with Peter Wohlleben? He is a german forester, writer and naturalist and one of my all time favourite books is by him; ‘The Hidden Life of Trees’. My next walk through a forest was a completely different experience after reading this book!

You might find it interesting reading and for a school based in a forest some of your students may also enjoy it. Good luck with the plant based yearbook, sounds like a great theme!

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The seeds of Jack Pine will only be released from their cones during a fire - in fact the cones will usually also stay on the tree unless engulfed in flames, meaning if there isn’t a fire for long enough the trunk and branches of the tree will often grow around old cones.

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Schistostega pennata is an interesting species of moss that has many common names such as goblins gold, dragon’s gold, and just luminous moss. It’s the sole member of its family.

Between the sporophyte and gametophyte stage, mosses have another transitional one called the protonema, which is a filamentous tube filled with chloroplasts that grows from the spore, and eventually produces gemmae from which the mature gametophytes grows. In most mosses, this stage is reduced and short-lived, but in Schistostega it has an important function and can live for multiple months.

This moss grows in shady places, such as caves Here Schistostega doesn’t face much competition. ts secret are the lens-like flat protonema outgrowths, which grow towards to the light source and focus the light onto the chloroplasts. The light then gets reflected back, giving the moss a luminous appearance. If you bring the moss into a well-lit place or shine a flashlight on it, the effect will disappear. This is probably where legends of magical cave gold that disappears once brought to the surface come from!
Another curious fact about this moss is that some protonemata never seem to receive any direct light, but still manage to grow because they’re illuminated by the protonema growing opposite to them.
The mature gametophyte has an interesting appearance reminiscent of a feather, in fact that’s where the epithet in *Schistostega pennata’*s scientific name comes from!
If you want to learn more, please check out this amazing article! It is part of a journal called Arctoa, which is all about bryophytes. I suggest looking into it if you’re interested in this group of plants.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/270427905_An_additional_observations_on_protonema_of_Schistostega_pennata_Bryophyta

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I haven’t figured out how to use some features of this website yet, so for some reason it doesn’t display all of the images I attach to a post. You can google the scientific name and they will come up

Yes, I love Peter Wohlleben’s work! The Hidden Life of Trees is a fantastic book!

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Thanks all. I have forwarded these to our yearbook crew. Many of these are excellent!

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Some carnivorous plants are actually switching to vegetarianism! More precisely, some species are better adapted at extracting nutrients from sources other than trapping insect prey.

Carnivorous plants live all over the world, generally in low-nutrient environments. They get their energy from the sun as most other plants but obtain much needed nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium from insect prey. The Venus flytrap of North Carolina is perhaps the best know example.

Bladderworts are carnivorous plants that suctions nearly microscopic prey into pouch-like traps. One species from the Southeast US, Utricularia purpurea, is not as effective at trapping prey and seems to have formed a mutualistic relationship with algae.

Tropical pitcherplants from Southeast Asia have cup-like traps that trap and digest mostly insects. Nepenthes ampullaria makes flask-like traps that grow on the forest floor and seem more adept at capturing leaf litter for nutrients. Nepenthes lowii has a lid that attracts tree shrews to feed. The shrews sit comfortably on the funnel shaped pitchers that captures the shrew’s droppings. A couple other species are thought to primarily obtain nutrients from animal excrement.

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