So I read somewhere once that all bamboo cloned from the same mother will flower simultaneously- regardless of geographic location. I'm no botanist, but this seems like an incredible thing to me! What's more is that the plant apparently can have a flowering cycle of anywhere between 7 and 150 years, and still manage to do this in time with every other cutting of the same mother... *shrug* I've been thinking on this for months now, and I can't seem to come up with a reasonable explanation for how this happens... Anyone want to shed a little light on this random curiosity?
likely a randomly placed gene sequence that is common among all of the clippings' chromosomes, yet distinctly different from every other bamboo plant.
So is it a timing thing then? Is there just a part of the plant that count's down from the end of it's last flowering to trigger the next or something? I wonder what kind of biological process that is.. and what keeps it so accurate.
Yes it is a timing thing, and it has to do with the genes and how they are arranged. It's like anything else in nature, how does any plant know how to flower, why is our maturity delayed? it's all in the genes. I'm not sure what the mechanism is that actually counts time within the plant structure, probably some protein complex-- but its phenotype, or expression, is directly connected with gene placement/location.
Well, I'd always just assumed that there was more randomosity to it all. That the plant's behavior was adjusted or manipulated by physical/nutritional input and growing conditions.. So to read that there are parts of a plant's biology that accurately keeps time regardless of input or growing conditions, across many unconnected plants.. Well, it just seems a bit unnatural! lol
No there's no magial hand that waves a wand and by some force of nature every plant flowers simultaneously. Think about it, there's a gene fixed onto a chromosome that causes the plant to flower at such and such time.. and that goes for well.. virtually every plant. Anyway when you cut that plant into 25 pieces let's say.. all root themselves as clones, and since they are CLONES, they all contain the exact same genetic material. Thus, they all contain the same gene that tells them to flower at the same time. There's no watch ticking away in the cells, like I said it's some sort of chemical process that not necessarily keeps time, it regulates periods.. but I've not done much study in the area. These innate, intrinsic, and really quite mysterious chemical process regulate everything in our body. Personally for me gene expression and timing isn't that interesting as far as processes, memory formation? I find that incredible. How we take something intangible and make it something tangible in our brains. Nuts!
*nod* Though for me, its easier to see how a neural network forms and maintains itself logically (though I'm kindof mystified by the physical growth of the brain itself). Perhaps it's just because I've been playing with virtual representations of self-growing pattern recognition software for a while. But the flowering thing; I'm not suggesting that it's a magical hand, it's just I guess that I'm more familiar with plants that flower based on environmental patterns, like marijuana -where flowering seems based on the light/dark cycle of a season, rather than an internal timer. Certainly not arguing with you, just trying to gain a better understanding through conversation. You've been insightfu, thanksl- I'm still a little uncertain, but I guess it's a little more settling that someone else understands it. Tells me that there's room to grow in my own understanding!
Ah, from there, I have no input. Probably just traits shared and exhibited among plants, some that bloom annually, perennially, or at the same time as every other piece cut from the same tree. Very interesting stuff, and there's always room for growth in our own understanding. Virtual representations of self-growing pattern recognition type software? That sounds really crazy
minus the virtual representation part.. its early, I'm tired.. language not coming out well. blah. But it's an idea I've been working out, where input of all types can be broken down into a binary stream, and you run that binary stream through a logic filter that breaks down a string of bits even further into one bit -either true or false- through a series of logic gates. The gate filter pattern being the result of a semi-random but guided digital evolution process, weighted by performance. Essentially.. if it works out well, you'll end up with a virtually cultivated function that can be used in more traditional software applications. After playing with the idea for a while, I realized that 'memory' would be grown into the hardwired logic filter itself over time after several hundred thousand permutations/generations. Always a product of the input itself, and different for every type of input fed into the function- so long as the input is always of the same type.
Ah that's really novel. It would essentially be a 'perfect' knowledge that they had, as to how to operate correctly and what to accept/expect. There wouldn't been too much variation? I know that doesn't make sense, the steamroller is still packed from 4:20. That's crazy though, breaking it all down into a binary stream. I did some work reading about Boolean truth tables and logic gates and such a while back, really interesting stuff. I wasn't smart enough to grasp all of it but what I did was pretty cool. Extremely intruiging how you can teach a machine through hard logic. Almost something I can't grasp in my current mind state. Haha, very, very, interesting stuff my man.
Yes, bamboo fruit at the exact same time. One species fruits every 48 years, bringing with it an invasion of rats. The rat population explodes with the bamboo fruiting. The locals dread this moment. They tend to have their rice crop eaten by the rats also. Good thing it only happens twice in a century.