Monkey puzzled

[RobArb]

Should that have said worries?

 

 

Think it should've said problem, as in no problem or no worries...

 

Damn predictive text!

 

 

Sent from Rob's GalaxySII

[elicokiz]

Think the reason you find fossilised monkey puzzle is to do with continental drift, ok so perhaps it did grow on the land mass that is now the UK but millions of years ago the continents formed Gondwana land and Pangaea.The UK would have been located in differing latitudes at these times? Then again I could be completly wrong as i'm not quite that old.

 

regards

Dave

[pgkevet]

Think the reason you find fossilised monkey puzzle is to do with continental drift, ok so perhaps it did grow on the land mass that is now the UK but millions of years ago the continents formed Gondwana land and Pangaea.The UK would have been located in differing latitudes at these times? Then again I could be completly wrong as i'm not quite that old.

 

regards

Dave

 

That idea crossed my mind too but animations of tectonic plates show the UK coming from north polar areas with no obvious association with the west side of the south american plates. It's hardly an obvious ocean current routing either.

 

Then again there would have been so much geological upheaval going on including deep ocean volcanic activity that anything has to be possible.

 

That they mined for the jet as well as finding it washed up suggests a huge deposit: which implies that perhaps instead of washed up logs there was some seeding and local forests of MP's that later suffered a catastrophe?

 

Interesting. Perhaps as a single sex tree it's more susceptible to extinction than a self fertile variety?

[elicokiz]

The other thing you have to think about is climate....There was no polar ice during the mild warm, subtropical Cretaceous,which is when the Monkey puzzle was more dominant. Another thing i thought of... Is jet actually Araucaria araucana or another species of Araucaria which was better adapted to life on Pangaea where whitby now exists

[elicokiz]

This is an intresting article if you have the time to read it?Araucariaceae (Araucaria family) description

[Amelanchier]

Is jet actually Araucaria araucana or another species of Araucaria which was better adapted to life on Pangaea where whitby now exists

 

The latter I suspect. Native is a confusing misnomer but intended to mean "trees that were about here without human agency since the last ice age receded " i.e., those that are indiginous to the UK (circa 11500ish years ago). So sod whatever was actually here first, the glaciers (quite literally) wiped the slate clean and that's a handy benchmark.

 

The fact that Homo sapiens is excluded from the qualifying process over all other organisms that move plants around is indicative of the temporally limited antropocentric nature of the term. It means nothing beyond that man made benchmark. People tend to have a very short view on such things IMO. The truly "native" state of the British Isles is likely either under the sea or under a big slab of ice - something the more rabid sects of conservationists who would have us return the countryside to its original untouched glory would do well to remember! They just prefer one temporary state over another - as do we all.

 

As an aside, I once met a rabidly bigoted old couple in my old district who after quizzing me on my heritage (seriously) were adament that they wanted to fell all the horrible (yet mature, attractive, established and thankfully protected) 'foreign' trees in their garden to replace them with nice native trees like Beech and Sweet Chestnut... Sigh. Bless their little xenophobic socks.

Edited September 7, 2011 by Amelanchier

[elicokiz]

I once met a rabidly bigoted old couple in my old district .

i am lovin that description...i'm definitely a visualiser:lol::lol:

[##ray##]

i like your answers, makes me think about what other trees have we lost through climate change and what other trees we might lose or gain through the present climate change even though it might not be as big as the last ones. also have another question - if a seed was to be buried in a state of storage in ice or something could it germinate if the conditions were to change i.e how long would the seeds last before they were no use

[elicokiz]

i like your answers, makes me think about what other trees have we lost through climate change and what other trees we might lose or gain through the present climate change even though it might not be as big as the last ones. also have another question - if a seed was to be buried in a state of storage in ice or something could it germinate if the conditions were to change i.e how long would the seeds last before they were no use

 

I vaugely remember reading that an artic lupin seed dated to be 10,000 years old gerninated from permafrost, grain found in the pyramids has also been found viable after thousands of years..there are two main groups of seed those being orthodox, the others being recalcitrant.The latter cannot tollerate being chilled as seed embyros may become damaged; as such, are much more difficult to store and as far as i'm aware consist mainly of tropical species?

[elicokiz]

Gutted.....just found the Lupin date has been debunked...oh well that will teach me to research first. BBC - Earth News - '10,000-year-old' seeds debunked