These aren't necessarily related to today's Ophiocordyceps fungus. Fungi that take control of arthropods and cause them to climb to disperse spores have convergently evolved more than once, including Arthrophaga myriapodina, which affects millipedes, and is in a different Division (the level above Class) from Ophiocordyceps.
Convergent evolution is more common than you might think. Trees, for example, have separately evolved at least 100 times.
I recently visited the national history museum and finally got a sense of the _weirdness_ of prehistoric trees. No bark, a green trunk (utilizing photosynthesis), tall like a palm tree. I'd love to see something like that now.
That sounds awesome! The oddest trees I have come across had big thorns like roses all over the trunk. Kind of hard to see because the trunk is so big, but you'd very quickly notice leaning against it.
That was in a botanical garden in Australia. No idea what they were or how common they are. Blew my mind.
The oddest tree I know of is poplar, which is incredibly common around here and is basically considered junk wood. Turns out, those individual, fast-growing trees are in fact stems of a large underground root system.
One of these trees has 47,000 stems:
> Most agree [...] that Pando encompasses 42.89 hectares (106 acres), weighs an estimated 6,000 metric tons (6,600 short tons) or 13.2 million pounds, and features an estimated 47,000 stems, which die individually and are replaced by genetically identical stems that are sent up from the tree's vast root system, a process known as "suckering". The root system is estimated to be several thousand years old, with habitat modeling suggesting a maximum age of 14,000 years and 16,000 years by the latest (2024) estimate.[
I'm mostly using the terminology from the Pando article. The article quotes a "Mitton and Grant" as writing:
> quaking aspen regularly reproduces via a process called suckering. An individual stem can send out lateral roots that, under the right conditions, send up other erect stems; from all above-ground appearances the new stems look just like individual trees. The process is repeated until a whole stand, of what appear to be individual trees, forms. This collection of multiple stems, called ramets, all form one, single, genetic individual, usually termed a clone.
It’s too soft to be of much use except the odd piece of furniture (for which it is pretty terrible because it dents too easily). As a woodworker finishing it also sucks because the fibers tear too easily. Its grain pattern looks bland at best, it ages poorly, and its color is too inconsistent from tree to tree.
That said, it’s one of the most stable woods so it doesn’t warp much which is why it’s a popular base material for plywood and it’s easy on cutting tools. I usually only use it for the interior parts of drawers.
Ceiba speciosa maybe? That is a weird tree for sure. I grew up where there were wild thorny honeylocust trees. The trunks are spotted with dense clusters of branching thorns, some of which are 8" long and stiff enough to puncture tractor tires. To paraphrase family guy, nature is scary.
Sounds like the nightmare tree I had to deal with as well. I never did find out what it was. Does the honeylocust produce a bunch of red berries? My dad used to get mad at me as a teen when I’d be lazy and not pick up the fallen limbs from this tree and puncture the tractor tires. It was to the sole reason I became very proficient at using the tire repair kit.
Yeah, we've got these in Beersheba (south of Israel). The only tree my ten year old won't climb. They've also got really interesting cotton-like fruits, though I'm not brave enough to taste them.
I don't know if you are talking about Drunken tree (palo borracho in spanish) but once playing soccer in a field with some of them I ended with around 15 funny parallels cuts. Good old times.
Conventionally, History starts with written records. Everything that came before is prehistoric. It’s useful as a concept when discussion groups of humans in the last 10-odd millennia, but not really for things that are a couple of millions years old.
> Prehistory [...] is the period of _human_ history between the first known use of stone tools by hominins c. 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems.
Trees are barely a firm category of plant at all. It's basically just tall plants with woody stems. Plants can gain and lose woody stems without too much trouble (relatively speaking, over evolutionary time). So any time a plant species currently growing soft stems can benefit from being really tall, they have a good chance of evolving into "trees".
As an aside there: the blog post briefly talks about birds. It turns out that membrane wings are much easier to evolve than feathered wings. There have been lots of membrane winged creatures (including "birds" with membrane wings in the Jurassic) but not nearly as many appearances of feathered wings.
In my imagined world of Halahala, silent stories have occupied prime real estate since 2005. I think of them like music without lyrics, jazz-like in the experience. The Cordyception is another riff on Halahala’s staple theme of nature, sustainability and our obsession with a certain ladder. An Attenborough documentary led me to these marvellous fungi called Cordyceps and the rest is pure Halahala. The fungi infect and take over specific insect-hosts – body and mind – commanding them to a high vantage point for dispersing spores.
"Cold Storage" by American screenwriter David Koepp comes to mind, a comedy splatter novel. I don't usually read such books, but this one was funny and entertaining.
Convergent evolution is more common than you might think. Trees, for example, have separately evolved at least 100 times.