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Ross Reid, aka Nerdy About Nature 🌲🤓🤙
@nerdyaboutnature

273,887 followers

Early terrestrial plant life on Earth first evolved from algae, coming up onto land and forming a wide range of non-vascular plants such bryophytes and lungworts that still exist today, like all these different mosses! Non-vascular plants are defined as such because they lack any vascular tissue that allows them to move water and different resources around within themselves and thus, they rely on sourcing the water and nutrients they need for photosynthesis through the environments in which they live. Since they lack and real structural support, non-vascular plant sizes are dictated by the stressors from the environments they live in and general don’t get taller than an inch or two. Eventually, plant life evolved to contain different vascular tissues that help the plant move water up from the ground to its leaves in the canopy to conduct photosynthesis, sending carbohydrates down to build up layers of strong, structural cellulose. This allows plants to grow big and tall, forming massive trees that reach to the sky with strong heartwood that keeps them standing! Though these two distinctions of plants are markedly different from one another, in many healthy ecosystems the two require each other to survive, as we can see in this oldgrowth coastal rainforest. The non-vascular plants require moisture in the air and surrounding them to photosythesize, AKA to eat, whereas the taller vascular plants tend to source their water from the soils, drawn up through their xylem by their roots. So the canopies of these bigger trees, shrubs and bushes of vascular plants shade the understory and prevent evaporation so that the non-vascular plants can exist, forming a layer over the soil that traps moisture for the vascular plants to use. It’s all part of a cycle, and everything has it’s place! Nerdy About Nature is a passion project that relies on support from folks like you! If you’re enjoying these vids, please consider becoming a patron at Patreon.com/NerdyAboutNature for as little as 1$ per month! 🤙 #plants #forest #ecology #naturelab #nature #learning #education #outdoored #vascular #evolution #science #edu #darwin