My wife says I need to diversify, and ought to make an occasional nod to these strange organisms called ‘non-animals’. Weird. So she sends me this photo by the Monterey Bay Aquarium and reminds me of those days in our youth when we’d find these whiplike kelp washed up on the beaches…I think it was a hint.
Nereocystis luetkeana
Memories, in the corner of my mind.
Yeah PZ stop neglecting the rest of the eukaryotes.
Mary’s Metaphyta? On Wednesday? Granted that there’s some alliteration, but it’s declining.
I want cephalopods.
Nothing like feeding off of solar energy, though.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
That’s bull.
And God said “It is easier for reason to enter through a plant than it is through the skull of a creationist”.
Indeed! It’s a big camel to swallow!
That’s bull.
Bull kelp, actually, or is that what you meant?
The best thing about Nereocystis is that when you find one washed up on the beach, you can cut open the long hollow stipe at both ends and play it like an alphorn (lederhosen not recommended on West Coast beaches).
Then you can tune them by trimming the length; once me and some friends produced a beautiful major 9 chord.
Well, I guess it depends on the particular beach. The lederhosen, I mean.
Yes, I was making a bad pun. *tucks tail between legs in shame and scurries off*
Not an Embryophyte, but autotrophic just the same!
A vast improvement!
I most heartily approve!
The Trophy Wife is a trophy indeed!
Well done, sir!
(& cetera!)
What about non eukaryotes, are you gonna dedicate a day to those, too?
What, the past 3.5 billion years hasn’t been enough for ’em? Now they need a freakin special day too?
Yeah, sometimes I just can’t can’t kelp it.
(Now if I was any good, I’d come up with one for “Phaeophyta.”)
The evolution of macro-algae from micro-algae, and the chloroplast from cyano-bacteria.
The continued gene transfer between organelle and host. Evolution is fascinating.
Worn out and washed up, the bodies lie naked on top of one another.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2616/4080366862_bc58e2ace6.jpg
You know you want to look.
AAAndrew
Mary’s got good taste.
This thread has made me curious: what does the Trophy Wife do for a living, if I may ask?
You can start a new trend: Whipped Wednesday Wildlife!
Those kelp look good.
A little salt, some pepper, olive oil, frying pan, ginsu knives…
Couldn’t you have slowly transitioned into botany with something like this? Did you have to do it all at once?!
http://www.plantphysiol.org/cgi/content/full/123/1/29
Solar-Powered Sea Slugs. Mollusc/Algal Chloroplast Symbiosis
By no means. Nereocystis isn’t a plant at all, it’s a brown “alga”.
You’re all damn organic elitists!
Mineraloracists, the lot of you!
Score!! This means my model organism’s kingdom is due for Tuesday or Thursday!
Once fungi are in, it’s only a matter of time before my particular critter is featured!!!
Candida albicans is due!
@DM: The important point is that it is not another goddamned octopus*. Bikonta Wednesday is a million times more fun than any Monday Metazoan**
*There. I said it. It’s on the record now.
**The Unikonts can rot in HELL.
David beat me in saying it’s not a plant. It’s a total poser, trying to look all plantlike and shit.
ermmmm…uhhh. Excuse my pique (#23). I was tired and hungry and I lashed out. Please don’t cancel Bikonta Wednesday on my account. I really didn’t mean it. I love cephalopods. Really love ’em.
One flagellum was enough for our Founding Fathers and Jesus (presumably) AND Tiktaalik and that’s good enough for me!
And that brings us full circle back to getting whipped.
Meaning this thread is rapidly going down the drain.
Given the web being world wide, is this thread draining clockwise or counterclockwise (anti-clockwise)? Or just going in circles?
Sven DiMilo:
(Now if I was any good, I’d come up with one for “Phaeophyta.”)
Have you found the brown note on your makeshift alphorn yet?
BTW, thats not a plant. Maybe it’s Mary’s Wednesday Eukaryot?
Cool. I can finally sign in.
Is this even botany? I believe this entry would be more appropriate for Skatje’s Saturday stramenopiles.
All I see are weeds!
I was at DLI in 91 learning Japanese and I went to that aquarium I bunch of times… this brings back very fond fond memories. Unfortunately I can’t remember a damn bit of the Japanese at this point. Kamiya Sensei would be so disappointed….
#31, in the broad sense, yes. A broad definition of botany includes non-plant algae (the clade Archaeplastida includes Rhodophyta and Glaucophyta) and even in the recent past fungi. In the more distant past, bacteria were even considered to be in the vegetable kingdom and thus sometimes still fall under definitions of “botany”.
Happy to see the botanists acknowledged here! And a non-angiosperm to boot! How about featuring the only known achlorophyllous bryophyte to parasitize a fungus, Cryptothallus? Just need some good pictures…
Cryptothallus mirabilis is the awesomest non-vascular plant of ALL TIMES!
Feast your peepers, meat-lovers:
http://rbg-web2.rbge.org.uk/bbs/Resources/gallery/cryptothallus%20mirabilis%203.jpg
is that supposed to be funny?
or what?
no, really
Nice photo, Antiochus. I’m also fond of Colura zoophaga, a carnivorous liverwort: http://books.google.com/books?id=vYwnc_L6el0C&lpg=PA1&pg=PT181#v=onepage&q=&f=false (micrographs on the right)
Woohoo! Thanks for the heads up. I will be sure to hunt for it next summer. Think of the prestige it will bring me when I show it to the Minnesota mycological society.
Yes, I need a life.
BS
Ok Sven, what is your nomination for the awesomest non-vascular plant of ALL TIMES!?
BS
*shrug* it’s oxymoronic.
Sven, vascular.
Not oxymoronic.
droserary: Word. Sven’s just hatin’ s’all. Like that Colura as well. Hepatophyta in da house!
Sven: What is funny about awesomeness?
John: Thanks.
Hmmm… I see something similar on the beaches on the eastern Australian coast. Is it the same species, or just a similar-looking one?
Protosalvinia. :p
Appalling how the link calls ciliates “animals” all the time… :-)
David: good catch. Perhaps a translation problem? The book was originally published in German and later translated for publication under the wonderful Timber Press productions. For a book on carnivorous plants, though, can they be forgiven for the mistake? After all, prey is prey, whether it be arthropod or ciliate! Om nom nom.
For the record, I was joking, and so I will now explain the joke, as follows:
Implying, here, in a tongue-in-cheek sort of fashion, that enthusiasm over the “awesomeness” of a nonvascular plant could not be serious.
I was not implying that I thought AE’s choice of “awesomest” nonvascular plant was any more or less appropriate than any other choice. And so when asked:
I answered:
Meaning, in a wacky, zany kind of joking way, that “awesomest” + “nonvascular plant” were incompatible.
I was not implying that “nonvascular” and “plant” were incompatible; I know about nonvascular plants. I even kind of like ’em, in a nice-background-for-photographing-salamanders or sometimes-you-can-find-tardigrades-in-em or interesting-organisms-from-a-water-to-land-transition-and-evolution of-life-cycles kind of way.
So now that all is explained, I think you will agree that it was pretty funny yoke I yoked, eh?