Mastodawn

I just don't have the time right now, but doing an explainer comic strip about weird plant science would be really fun. I'm working on a large (for a private property anyway) orchard and have been trying to get textbooks on the science and there is just so much strangeness, so many mysteries. There's also a lot of what I think of as "lore" e.g. "this plant is referenced once in 1943, but may be lost, except for a single garden in the mountains of West Virginia..."

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Zach Weinersmith 19m ago

@DrEvanGowan It's super cool! We're so tuned to mammal reproduction, of course, but some of the thing plants can do is bizarre. TBH, if I were a creationist, I'd go for canina meiosis wayyyyy before lenses.

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Zach Weinersmith 23m ago

Like caninae are all over Europe and Asia, , their genes hybridize well, they're very robust and often used as rootstock for that reason. Maybe this is actually a better way to do reproduction, but it was so unlikely that it pretty much only happened here.

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Zach Weinersmith 25m ago

WHY DO THEY DO THIS?

I don't know that there's a good answer, and it's a very unusual strategy. You could argue well, you get the benefit of a combo approach, where your genes are mostly preserved but there's some sexual mixing. Or, it could be it's just a freak thing that happened after a chance hybridization long ago. What's interesting with something like this is it could be, like, an evolutionary path not taken, but which could've been dominant in a different timeline.

Zach Weinersmith 27m ago

Since Mastodon is for nerds, I'm here to share a nerd thing. I'm interested in rose breeding, and one thing you have to account for there is ploidy, which can determine whether species can cross. There's a type of rose called dogroses (Rosa canina), often used in cooking, which has its own, unique and bizarre, pentaploid meiosis.

28 mom chromosomes, 7 dad chomosomes. The dad part is shuffled like normal. The mom part is only partially shuffled.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09171-z

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Zach Weinersmith 39m ago

Part of what's interesting to me is that humans seem really beguiled by "there's a special thing you don't know about," but the answer appears to be "they have the same system as us, with small adjustments."

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Zach Weinersmith 53m ago

@blindcoder I'm biased but I think it's really good! Like the opposite of the prevailing "one weird thing that unlocks the secret" form of pop sci.

Zach Weinersmith 1h ago

Dunno if I've mentioned I here, but my wife Kelly does a podcast with our friend Daniel Whiteson. One of my favorite running themes is Kelly Ruins Cool Science Facts. In the middle segment of this one, there's a really good bit about the widely repeated idea that giraffes and bats have special blood valves. https://omny.fm/shows/daniel-and-kellys-extraordinary-universe/listener-questions-34

Listener Questions #34 - Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

Daniel and Kelly answer listener questions about what creates the morning fog, why bats don't get dizzy, and the cauchy horizon.

Zach Weinersmith 16h ago

Oh the humanities...
Full comic here: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/humanities-2

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Zach Weinersmith 20h ago

@katfeete Oh, I love Edible Landscaping!