Pando

[bladespark]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pando_%28tree%29

How did I not know about this? All those classes about biology, all those Childcraft books, all that random reading about strange facts, and watching of nature shows about odd animals and plants, why in all of this did NOBODY ever tell me that aspens clone? I remember reading about the clone system that trees have on Sphynx in the Honor Harrington books and thinking it was a very neat alien touch! But it's not all that alien if trees on earth do it! I knew lots of herbacious plants did this, but I had no idea that trees did.

Does the fact that I think it's totally awesome that groves of aspens are often just one aspen cloning itself makes me too much of a geek? But it is! You're standing in the middle of a bunch of trees, but they're all one tree! Like standing in the middle of a bunch of clone troopers. Only trees.

(And it's from Utah! I'm from Utah! I used to live within reasonable driving distance of Pando, and I didn't even know it! Heck, I've been to aspen groves that were probably clone colonies, and I had no idea! Clones!)

Comments

[harliquinnraver.livejournal.com]

that is the most awesome thing EVER.

i mean...just...wow.

[kainhighwind-dr.livejournal.com]

That IS peculiar. I mean, rose bushes, hawthorn (more a bush, not a tree I think, though ours definitely grows like one), mushrooms, grasses... all those things engage in that behaviour, but I can't currently think of any other genuine 'tree' off the top of my head that does that. That's pretty cool.

[beetlecat.livejournal.com]

You can actually tell which stands of trees are clones because they all change colour and drop their leaves at the same time in the fall.

That's why, in trembling aspen stands, the fall colours occur in bunches, rather than uniformly throughout the forest.

Being a clone can be trouble since any disease or organism which affect one tree will affect them all, but the fact that they can reproduce via suckers off parent trees means that the can spread very, very quickly.

If your lawn is on the edge of an aspen forest, you have to make sure to mow all the way to the edge of the forest, or your lawn will get smaller and smaller as the forest moves in.

[lin-chan.livejournal.com]

That's awesome

[mavikfelna.livejournal.com]

It would be more awesome if the evil things didn't try and take over the world wherever you plant them. Oh, and if I wasn't DEATHLY allergic to them. ;)

--Mav

[reaverta.livejournal.com]

...You're a loon.

(But a cute loon.)

[reaverta.livejournal.com]

Actually the clone thing is a pretty clever trick, but it's not unknown in nature. Queen bees can do it too! (Though that is technically a touch different, meh close enough.)

And then you get the man-made ones - I think there's like, six Pine trees in NZ? No, not six species. Six pine trees. (Or maybe some other number. But it's rediculously small, all the same.)

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

That's cool. I've never heard about the queen bee thing either, now I need to go look it up.

[reaverta.livejournal.com]

The drones in a colony are laid with half the chromatids of a normal bee. This makes them male, somehow.

These then mate with the female, and produce child bees. It's the genetic quirk that means it's genetically benificial to be a caring aunt more than a caring mother, and is why the hive system works from a biological standpoint. Ants do something similar.

[beetlecat.livejournal.com]

Worker bees aren't really clones so much as sisters. The drone (father) bee's sperm are all identical clones but the queen's eggs are not (AFAIK) so the genes recombine and make different (abet genetically similar) individual worker bees.

Male drones are hatched from unfertilized eggs, so they technically have half the gene complement of the queen.. that's not really a clone either, but I'm at a loss for what to call it.

[reaverta.livejournal.com]

... Is this correcting me, or clarifying my answer further? I'm curious; I honestly can't tell.

(And no, neither the drones nor the worker bees are clones per se. The eggs all have different crossover events and such having occoured, so they're all likely to be at least somewhat different. But it's still a pretty scary sort of thing!)

[lightgreendryad.livejournal.com]

Yeah. This is the main reason why I did my senior research paper on Aspens. Of course, any topic gets a little dull when the only rule of the research paper is that you have to cover whatever topic you pick completely.

[reaverta.livejournal.com]

(I like your picture by the way.)

[lightgreendryad.livejournal.com]

Why, thank you. The credit goes to someone named venus_ice.

[reaverta.livejournal.com]

Whoever it was, they were very clever! It took me a few moments to realise what I was looking at.