I found this post a delightful object-level exploration of a really weird phenomenon (the sporadic occurrence of the “tree” phenotype among plants). The most striking line for me was:
Most “fruits” or “berries” are not descended from a common “fruit” or “berry” ancestor. Citrus fruits are all derived from a common fruit, and so are apples and pears, and plums and apricots – but an apple and an orange, or a fig and a peach, do not share a fruit ancestor.
What is even going on here?!
On a meta-level my takeaway was to be a bit more humble in saying what complex/evolved/learned systems should/shouldn’t be capable of/do.
Well, if you dissect them, you see they are actually nothing alike. They converged on a cool concept—if I surround my offspring with a hard protection and then wrap it in lots of bright, sweet softness, an animal will eat the shell and ingest the offspring without killing the offspring, and deposit it somewhere with fertiliser later—but the way a lemon vs. a cherry is made up is totally different. The number of offspring, their encasement, the way the fruit is structured, its shell, its number, it is a completely different thing. Like different human cultures that developed houses, without learning it from each other. But the structures don’t match at all.
Yet within the same structure, the result can still look super different too humans—yet within the same broader thing, plants are absolute whores. A citrus will happily fuck any other citrus, and something tasty always results. You know oranges? Oranges are what happens if you breed pomelo (a huge slightly bitter citrus) with mandarin (a small sweet citrus), and they seamlessly breed and give you awesome oranges (a medium sized balanced citrus). And then if you find the result too sweet, you can breed the orange back to the pomelo, and get grapefruits.
And if you love all the citrus plants too much to decide between them, you can cut branches from your favourites, stick them into one citrus plant, and have them merge into a functional Frankenstein citrus plant that bears multiple different fruit. https://www.fruitsaladtrees.com/ I love my citrus trees.
I found this post a delightful object-level exploration of a really weird phenomenon (the sporadic occurrence of the “tree” phenotype among plants). The most striking line for me was:
What is even going on here?!
On a meta-level my takeaway was to be a bit more humble in saying what complex/evolved/learned systems should/shouldn’t be capable of/do.
Well, if you dissect them, you see they are actually nothing alike. They converged on a cool concept—if I surround my offspring with a hard protection and then wrap it in lots of bright, sweet softness, an animal will eat the shell and ingest the offspring without killing the offspring, and deposit it somewhere with fertiliser later—but the way a lemon vs. a cherry is made up is totally different. The number of offspring, their encasement, the way the fruit is structured, its shell, its number, it is a completely different thing. Like different human cultures that developed houses, without learning it from each other. But the structures don’t match at all.
Yet within the same structure, the result can still look super different too humans—yet within the same broader thing, plants are absolute whores. A citrus will happily fuck any other citrus, and something tasty always results. You know oranges? Oranges are what happens if you breed pomelo (a huge slightly bitter citrus) with mandarin (a small sweet citrus), and they seamlessly breed and give you awesome oranges (a medium sized balanced citrus). And then if you find the result too sweet, you can breed the orange back to the pomelo, and get grapefruits.
And if you love all the citrus plants too much to decide between them, you can cut branches from your favourites, stick them into one citrus plant, and have them merge into a functional Frankenstein citrus plant that bears multiple different fruit. https://www.fruitsaladtrees.com/ I love my citrus trees.