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The Discreet Movements of the Sunflower The Discreet Movements of the Sunflower
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Photo by Timothy Eberlyl/Unsplash
Nature

The Discreet Movements of the Sunflower

How Plants Move
Marcin Zych
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time 6 minutes
Marcin Zych:
Evolutionary ecologist, voyeur of the intimate lives of plants, director of the Botanical Garden of the University of Warsaw. He believes that plants are capable of everything.

Although plants are not speed merchants and can’t catch up with insects flying away from them, they are capable of twisting and climbing, and also of reacting to stimuli in a systematic and coordinated manner. They are not immobile, but our zoocentrism sometimes prevents us from noticing it.

Many organisms can move, which allows them to be aware of their surroundings and arrange themselves in the most beneficial position from many aspects. Movement is obvious in some ways when we speak of animals, yet when it comes to plants it is harder to notice – it requires far more patience. In general, plants (to simplify, we will stick to land plants) are basically incapable of changing the location in which they live. However, they too can register environmental transformations and, through movement, optimize their chances for survival, growth and reproductive success.

This phenomenon was already seen in antiquity. For examp

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Marcin Zych:
Evolutionary ecologist, voyeur of the intimate lives of plants, director of the Botanical Garden of the University of Warsaw. He believes that plants are capable of everything.
Translation: Annie Jaroszewicz
Publish date: 18.06.2021

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A diagram of how the first land vertebrates moved. These tracks could only have been left behind by a tetrapod with limbs with movable joints: hips, knees, elbows.
Nature

Made for Walking?

The Evolution of Limbs
Mikołaj Golachowski
Mikołaj Golachowski:
a polar explorer with a PhD in natural sciences, who spends four months every year in Antarctica and in the Arctic. Mikołaj writes about nature for both children and adults. His latest books are “Czochralem antarktycznego słonia” [I’ve Ruffled an Antarctic Elephant] (Marginesy, 2016) and “Gęby, dzioby i nochale” [Gobs, Beaks and Schnozzes] (Babaryba, 2016).

Around four hundred million years ago, our ancestors turned toward land—first with their eyes, and then their fins, which soon became legs. Was it a good decision? Their descendants’ views seem to be divided.

A Gary Larson cartoon is lodged in my memory: two froggy/fishy creatures gaze longingly from the water onto the beach. One of them is holding a baseball bat in its fin/hand, and there’s a carelessly struck ball on the sand. The caption says: “Great moments in evolution.” When I was later reading Carl Zimmer’s book At the Water’s Edge (about how life emerged onto land and then returned to the sea) and saw that the first chapter is entitled “After a Lost Balloon,” of course I immediately thought that the author had pinched Larson’s joke about the ball. But the truth turned out to be much more interesting.

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