Sunday 19 March 2017

Brambles Defy Naturalistic Expectations: They Can Crawl

Some brambles like to move. Image courtesy of Anthony Appleyard, public domain.



Joel Kontinen

Flowers and other plants do not fit in well with Darwinian expectations.

Charles Darwin was puzzled by the lack of evidence for the evolution of angiosperms or flowering plants.

The earliest flowers look more or less like today’s flowers.

And plants defy Darwinian thinking in other ways as well. They communicate with other plants. Trees sleep.

Some plants thrive in almost impossible conditions. Some use a clever trick to avoid being eaten. Some use colour to get more energy from the sun.

Recently, BBC Earth introduced yet another feature that makes plants special: brambles can crawl up to 7,5 centimetres (3 inches) a day.

It's their branches that move. Obviously, their roots have to stay where they are.

It seems that even thorny plants that remind us of the Fall described in Genesis 3 defy Darwinian expectations by doing the seemingly impossible.

Source:

BBC Earth. 2017. Time-lapse footage reveals a bramble ‘crawling’(14 March).