Great article. There was an article about avocadoes recently that talked about the same subject.
Great article. There was an article about avocadoes recently that talked about the same subject.
Originally shared by Erin Kane
What can you do when you are an ecological anachronism?
"Consider the fruit of the Osage-orange, named after the Osage Indians associated with its range. In the fall, Osage-orange trees hang heavy with bright green, bumpy spheres the size of softballs, full of seeds and an unpalatable milky latex. They soon fall to the ground, where they rot, unused, unless a child decides to test their ballistic properties."
There are some trees I saw near the edges of the Tai Forest with big spikes on them, going up maybe 12 feet (4 meters or so). They were too big to be painful when I touched them, and squirrels used them as handholds. I couldn't figure out quite what to make of it, and then I remembered that until pretty recently, the forest was full of elephants who were probably very destructive if you were a tree that they wanted to rub against, or something. Elephants have been extirpated through most of the forest, but if you walk another 3 or 4 hours into the interior, you can find them.
#scienceeveryday #megafauna #mammoths
http://www.americanforests.org/magazine/article/trees-that-miss-the-mammoths
Originally shared by Erin Kane
What can you do when you are an ecological anachronism?
"Consider the fruit of the Osage-orange, named after the Osage Indians associated with its range. In the fall, Osage-orange trees hang heavy with bright green, bumpy spheres the size of softballs, full of seeds and an unpalatable milky latex. They soon fall to the ground, where they rot, unused, unless a child decides to test their ballistic properties."
There are some trees I saw near the edges of the Tai Forest with big spikes on them, going up maybe 12 feet (4 meters or so). They were too big to be painful when I touched them, and squirrels used them as handholds. I couldn't figure out quite what to make of it, and then I remembered that until pretty recently, the forest was full of elephants who were probably very destructive if you were a tree that they wanted to rub against, or something. Elephants have been extirpated through most of the forest, but if you walk another 3 or 4 hours into the interior, you can find them.
#scienceeveryday #megafauna #mammoths
http://www.americanforests.org/magazine/article/trees-that-miss-the-mammoths
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