When I came across these facts, upon a little wider reading I had a similar additional mind-blowing moment around the whole set of circumstances of the ‘alternation of generations’ (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternation_of_generations) exhibited by plants, fungi and a few other groups. For me, this exploded my conception of what reproduction strategies can look like (and my conception was probably already not even that narrow by most standards). Wait til you read about seed development and ploidy! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seed
I identify strongly with the excitement of discovery and enquiry in this post!
OP or readers may enjoy some additional examples of extinct or living-fossil tree-strategizing clades: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycad (extant, includes larger extinct tree species) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossopteris (extinct ‘seed fern’ tree group) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_fern (a few extant, includes larger extinct tree species) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lepidodendrales (extinct tree ‘club mosses’ - not really mosses) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototaxites (not even a plant probably!)
When I came across these facts, upon a little wider reading I had a similar additional mind-blowing moment around the whole set of circumstances of the ‘alternation of generations’ (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternation_of_generations) exhibited by plants, fungi and a few other groups. For me, this exploded my conception of what reproduction strategies can look like (and my conception was probably already not even that narrow by most standards). Wait til you read about seed development and ploidy! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seed