Photograph by Rob Dullien.
Tradescantia occidentalis -- prairie or western spiderwort, near Coyote Buttes, Arizona, May, 2014.
6 Comments
ksplawn · 25 August 2014
This plant shows all the hallmarks of being the object of design, rather than random chance + mutations! Such features include:
1) Having cells.
2) Having cells with DNA in them.
3) Not being achievable by opening a jar of peanut butter and leaving it out for a few years.
4) Reminding me of a machine in some way.
Tradescantia occidentalis is clearly the Darwinist's worst nightmare! [/sarcasm]
Just Bob · 25 August 2014
ksplawn said:
Tradescantia occidentalis is clearly the Darwinist's worst nightmare! [/sarcasm]
Just about anything is, right? All you have to do is call it that.
Henry J · 25 August 2014
Except for the minor little detail that overturning an accepted theory is how a lot of famous scientists got that way...
Kevin B · 26 August 2014
Because of the colour of the background, I initially tried to interpret the image as a Mars lander.
beatgroover · 26 August 2014
Worst things to ever have to pull out of your garden. If you're lucky enough to have it in a good spot than lucky you, these have giant rootballs that look like thousands of strands of spaghetti (all of them just as thick as cooked noodles) all tied up and grabbing onto the soil so hard you have to dig the whole thing out and damage a lot of plants around it. And the sap stains your clothes a rust color once exposed to the heat of a dryer. Sure is pretty though! And supposedly turns pink when exposed to radiation, being a bit of a "folk Geiger counter"
Joe Felsenstein · 27 August 2014
An interesting property of some Tradescantia species is that they have gigantic chromosomes, which were easy for early cytologists to see. They don't have the largest amount of DNA, but they have some of the largest chromosomes. There was major cytogenetic work by the cytologist Karl Sax on Tradescantia in the 1930s, including some on this species.
6 Comments
ksplawn · 25 August 2014
This plant shows all the hallmarks of being the object of design, rather than random chance + mutations! Such features include:
1) Having cells.
2) Having cells with DNA in them.
3) Not being achievable by opening a jar of peanut butter and leaving it out for a few years.
4) Reminding me of a machine in some way.
Tradescantia occidentalis is clearly the Darwinist's worst nightmare! [/sarcasm]
Just Bob · 25 August 2014
Henry J · 25 August 2014
Except for the minor little detail that overturning an accepted theory is how a lot of famous scientists got that way...
Kevin B · 26 August 2014
Because of the colour of the background, I initially tried to interpret the image as a Mars lander.
beatgroover · 26 August 2014
Worst things to ever have to pull out of your garden. If you're lucky enough to have it in a good spot than lucky you, these have giant rootballs that look like thousands of strands of spaghetti (all of them just as thick as cooked noodles) all tied up and grabbing onto the soil so hard you have to dig the whole thing out and damage a lot of plants around it. And the sap stains your clothes a rust color once exposed to the heat of a dryer. Sure is pretty though! And supposedly turns pink when exposed to radiation, being a bit of a "folk Geiger counter"
Joe Felsenstein · 27 August 2014
An interesting property of some Tradescantia species is that they have gigantic chromosomes, which were easy for early cytologists to see. They don't have the largest amount of DNA, but they have some of the largest chromosomes. There was major cytogenetic work by the cytologist Karl Sax on Tradescantia in the 1930s, including some on this species.