Ancestors

Toot

Written by 🌈☔🌦️🍄 on 2025-01-19 at 21:48

Soo much moss in the forest, some of it frozen. Recently learned how plants can keep out ice out of their cells, amazing stuff...

[#]Mosstodon

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Descendants

Written by Stephen Bannasch (316 ppm) on 2025-01-19 at 22:29

@wmd

How do they do it?

My Saffron stays green all winter and has completely died back above ground by early June. They come up again at the end of August-early September. It’s hard to imagine they are creating more plant mass in the winter — but they keep making new corms every year??

[#]Saffron #gardening

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Written by 🌈☔🌦️🍄 on 2025-01-19 at 22:36

@stepheneb David George Haskell goes into quite some details in 'the forest unseen', but they use salination differences to keep the freezing on the outside, and the transfer from states creates some heat it can use to keep it a bit warmer in the cell.

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Written by 🌈☔🌦️🍄 on 2025-01-19 at 22:41

@stepheneb Correction, it was sugar:

https://pastebin.com/KtYu1q2z

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Written by Stephen Bannasch (316 ppm) on 2025-01-19 at 22:54

@wmd

Fascinating!

I’ve been growing Saffron in a bed since fall 2020. The first winter I worried about the cold and put a little hoop house over the bed. Since then I’ve done nothing. As soon as it warms up in the spring these shoots will rise up about halfway to where they were in the Fall and stay green until late May.

This week we have lows to minus 2 F — colder than it’s been for quite awhile. Interesting to see if this affects the Saffron later!

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Written by 🌈☔🌦️🍄 on 2025-01-19 at 22:59

@stepheneb If you like that, I can recommend the entire book, it's a lovely read.

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Written by Stephen Bannasch (316 ppm) on 2025-01-19 at 23:07

@wmd

Did the descriptions of the mechanisms come from the book you mentioned earlier: “David George Haskell goes into quite some details in 'the forest unseen'”? I’ll see if my library can get a copy.

In the Fall until it gets snowy the spiky shoots stick almost straight up. In the Spring they come back but not straight up. I suppose that could be the snow loads, some elements of the cells not supporting previous rigidity from freezing changes, or both.

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Written by 🌈☔🌦️🍄 on 2025-01-19 at 23:13

@stepheneb yes, it's a quote from the book.

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