Dyckia role as pioneer plants is to create suitable conditions for other plants to establish themselves in a very hostile environment. This way their leaves bend down and are made full of spines. This enables the plant to gather organic debris as dead lichen and mosses that had grew on the bare rock. They literally fabricate substrate to other plants to grow on the rocks or on sandy grounds.
This mission made Dyckias special and quite unique. We usually forget Dyckias are not part of an army of very same and equal looking soldiers. Small differences appears amid them and this way the species has a way to better deal with the changes in their environment.
Look here down these two pictures show Dyckia hebdingii:
Would you tell they are both Dyckia hebdingii?
Well, they are!
Science describes one plant and we are invited and induced to believe all the other plants look exactly the very same. A new species must have more than just new looks. Believe, science is awaking and finding out this too. Several species are getting reunited in one single species. This way several once species are now taken of varieties of one other one.
Some species are being found out as natural hybrids too even when the parent plants are long lost and never known to exist as Dyckias die and are vanished from nature when their role is accomplished and they get shadowed by the plants they helped to exist.This make Dyckias suicidal plants.
Mutable plants need mutable science, don´t they?
No comments:
Post a Comment