Trees changed almost everything

A recent publication in geology (this link takes you to the SciAmer news, not the publication directly) reports that rivers changed significantly because of the evolution of trees. Although rivers vary significantly, they were broad and shallow with wandering courses prior to the evolution of trees where upon these larger plants with deeper roots which could hold more soil began restricting rivers to narrower, and therefore deeper, channels. So it comes as no great surprise that many flood prone areas are often the result of deforestation. Rivers are certainly not the Phactor's cup of tea, but trees are. It's hard to imagine Earth without its mantle of forests and soil, although it certainly isn't what it used to be. This story takes you back to the Devonian, a smallish geological period, just under 60 million years in duration beginning 416 million years ago. At the beginning of the Devonian one group of vascular plants existed and they ranged in size from about the length of your little finger to a full hand span, tip of the thumb to tip of the little finger, and they were the biggest plants on land! But by the end of the Devonian not only had plants diversified considerably, but the first aborescent plants appear, pseudosporochnalean cladoxylopsids. About 10 million years later the first true trees (Archaeopteris) appeared right at the end of the Devonian. The former grew like tree ferns while the latter had a branching crown, and you need more an more anchoring to keep bigger plants standing upright. The next geological period, the Carboniferous, the dominate land plants were aborescent forms of clubmosses, horsetails, and ferns, and these, along with the early seed plants, pteridosperms, formed the forests that changed the form of rivers.

TP really bums me out!

This really bums me out! Old growth forests are being pulped to make cushy soft toilet paper! Talk about squandering of a natural resource! Why this is even stupider than buying water in plastic bottles! So why not use recycled paper for TP, especially since it gets flushed down the crapper any ways? Well, the fiber length gets shorter, so the paper gets a bit coarser and a bit stiffer. For decades makers of TP have waged advertising wars to convince consumers that each has the most squeeze-ably soft TP. And of course strength is an issue. You can’t save trees by reducing the layers or the thickness if it then requires you to “double up”. And there’s lots more research to do too. No one has done a definitive study to determine if crumpling is more efficient use of TP than folding, or if perforations at different intervals, or even absent, reduces or increases use, even if they never tear really well anyways, or if the roll is supposed to feed over the top or from underneath. OK that last one has actually been decided by our feline TP attendant who requires an over the top feed for him to do his job efficiently.

In the Phactor’s many travels around the tropics, he’s encountered lots of “inferior” TPs, and they all get the job done. So does a bucket of water and a towel (You were carrying one?), once you get the technique of it, and then you begin to understand the prohibition of eating or touching someone with your left hand. Bottom line, cotton cloudy softy cushy bummy wipes are not a product anyone needs. Of course none of us can remember when last year’s Sears & Roebuck’s mail order catalog got recycled in the house out back. So the idea of cutting down old growth trees for TP because the longer fibers feel softer on your bum gives you a good idea of what’s wrong with American consumerism. Their job is to sell TP not save the environment or use resources wisely. So it is up to the consumer to watch the real bottom line. The next time you see a clear cut section of coniferous forest, you’ll know what to think. How charmin’.

Oldest tree on Earth - period!

Just days after posting about the oldest living tree on Earth, while working on educating myself about fern phylogeny, up pops references to the oldest tree on Earth, an organism that produced the first forests.

For those of you who really want to know, the tree in question is a pseudosporochnalean cladoxylopsid, a Devonian ancestor of ferns. This particular forest tree dates to 385 mya (million years ago), surpassing what was previously the oldest known tree, a progymnosperm called Archaeopteris, but a relative youngster appearing no more than 370 mya. Interestingly enough, both were discovered near Gilboa, New York in the Catskills. You may wonder how such big things as trees can escape the attention of geologists and paleobotanists, but it wasn't that these trees weren't known. They were, but the problem with fossils is that some assembly is required, if you know you have the right pieces to the puzzle.

The trunks of these forests were very well known. What wasn't know was what kind of tree they were. About 50 years ago a tree trunk with gymnospermous wood was found physically attached to a ferny foliage, the absolute evidence that these two fossils were in fact one and the same plant. And that is how progymnosperms, the ancestors of seed plants, were discovered.


Similarly the fossil trunks (Eospermatopteris) were matched up recently to smaller trunks bearing the fossil "foliage" called Wattieza. The entire tree is known by the latter name because was the first published (a principle of priority). The "foliage" is not composed of leaves, but of branches that were attached to the trunk in a helical whorl quite like the leaves of tree ferns, cycads, or palms. And now that it was known how big the trunk was, their height could be estimated, and these ancient trees grew to 8 meters. This is quite amazing because at the beginning of the Devonian (416 mya), land vegetation was no taller than knee high. And just 30 million years later, there were forests.

Forests really change things because trees are giant obstacles that alter their environment, the weather, the climate, the soil, and they make habitat for other organisms. So trees like this are responsible for transforming a barren terrestrial environment into a green Earth we would recognize. But it is hard at such a great distance to appreciate such organisms, and to that end I can think of no more fitting appreciation than a poem.

Ode to a pseudosporochnalean cladoxylopsid

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a pseudosporochnalean cladoxylopsid . . . tree

A tree whose “whorled dichotomous ultimate units” . . . earn
An ancestry to the modern fern

A tree whose “photosynthetic/reproductive modules” . . . on high
Provide lowly detritivores with a food supply

A tree whose “digitally branched modules” . . . rain
Spores upon a Devonian plain.

A pseudosporochnalean cladoxylopsid that in times, post Ice Age
Is resurrected by a geology hammer’s rage

Poems are made by fools like me
But only Darwin can theorize a pseudosporochnalean cladoxylopsid . . . tree

By Robert Titus, Kaatskill Life, Winter 2007-2008.