https://eukaryotewritesblog.com/2021/05/02/theres-no-such-th...
A better comparison is "Fliyers", that include most insects, most birds, bats, pterodactyls and perhaps a few gliding and kitting animals. It evolveded and disappeared a few times.
You'd think that now that we have LLMs, the actual in-your-face empirical evidence of a system that can effectively navigate the complexities of the real world without being fed, or internally developing, rigid ontologies, that people would finally get the memo - but alas.
If you're interested, check out Rupert Sheldrake:
https://www.sheldrake.org/files/pdfs/papers/Is_the_Sun_Consc...
A beautiful living thing which my perception of its rythmic swing has lived on with me for decades. Trees are lovely.
Young Eucalyptus trees have leaves that are rounded and are arranged opposite to one another. However, when mature the leaves of a Eucalyptus are lance-like and are arranged in an alternating fashion. This to me is quite unusual.
In areas where they are introduced, they also become quite invasive by practicing something called alelopathy, whereby they introduce toxins into the soil to prevent competing tree species from taking hold.
While I'm at it, Eucalyptus trees have very very dense wood which means the wood burns very hot. This makes it even worse for forest fires where Eucalyptus trees dominate.
(I knew my botany studies would come in handy someday. I just never knew when!)
But at the same time the wood is also very dense, so makes great campfire wood, but doesn't burn so much in a forest fire, which is a bit ironic...
Forgive my ignorance, but I had understood the density of the wood meaning that the trunks of the trees were less likely to burn in a forest fire (which eucalypts encourage by shedding large amounts of dry bark)
Those things are tough, and they grow really fast in the right climate.
had*
@dang, I wish we had more time to edit our posts.
I live in South Australia and I was surprised to hear about all Eucalypts having 'leaf dimorphism' (that is what I searched for, then learned that it's usually known as 'heteroblasty') I have of course seen it many times in-the-wild, but it is not universal to all Eucalypts.
Banksia, Grevillea and Hakea are also very beautiful Australian native trees/shrubs imo, but they are a different group: Proteaceae. And there's a fascinating fruiting small tree called 'Quandong' that's in the Sandalwood family (still seems bit related to eucalypts or maybe Wattle (Acacia) when looking at it in real life though).
It grew 40m in ~10 years and spanned ~200-300m^2
Must have been ideal conditions for it in your case and maybe it happened to be a particularly vigorous/fast-growing variant!? I have heard that it can be hard to get the seeds to germinate (sounds like it was working without troubles on your property!) I'd actually be kinda happy if it took over most of the grass at my place though I reckon! :)
See E. grandis, E. tetraptera, E. chartaboma, E. deglupta, E. pulverulenta for examples of diversity
Some are incredibly tall with really smooth skin, some are basically bushes, some have really messy papery bark; some even have rainbow bark! Some have really long leaves while some have extremely short tightly wound round leaves
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metasequoia_glyptostroboides
I started 2 sprouts I bought by mail order, after one growing season they were nearly 3 feet tall. I got them mail order from Jonsteen Nursery, they have been specializing in various redwood saplings for many years. https://sequoiatrees.com/
It makes sense now that the species was discovered in the 40s
https://www.indefenseofplants.com/blog/2017/12/12/the-travel...
https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/blog/2025/08/ancient-yew-tr...
All a matter of having an open and curious mind, I suppose.
Feinman was a curious character.
I suspect that with even a modest breadth of knowlegde a deep investigation of anything brings associations with existing knowledge (interest), unexpected connections and exceptions.
So Monocots don't have rings. Anything else that is a tree in a tropical forest has rings. It does not matter where they grow. The rings are smaller in slow growing species, and are different structurally in conifers, but this is all.
Two examples right from downtown São Paulo,
> Recent 2024 analysis confirmed it is at least 16,000 years old, with possibilities ranging up to 80,000 years, making it one of the oldest living organisms.
[0]: https://imgur.com/gallery/what-kind-of-plant-is-this-grew-le...
everyone should have a copy of Identifying Wood on their metal bookshelf
A wikipedia dive session is likely to get more and more specific into trees (attacked by twees!); an encyclopedia flip session is more likely to go across a wide variety of subjects.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download