{"id":25862,"date":"2010-07-24T08:10:14","date_gmt":"2010-07-24T08:10:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/moss-that-makes-mushroom-clouds-a-plant-explodes-to-spread-its-spores-80beats\/"},"modified":"2010-07-24T08:10:14","modified_gmt":"2010-07-24T08:10:14","slug":"moss-that-makes-mushroom-clouds-a-plant-explodes-to-spread-its-spores-80beats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/astronomy\/moss-that-makes-mushroom-clouds-a-plant-explodes-to-spread-its-spores-80beats.php","title":{"rendered":"Moss That Makes Mushroom Clouds: A Plant Explodes to Spread Its Spores | 80beats"},"content":{"rendered":"

The browser you are currently using does not support the Discover photo galleries. Supported browsers include recent versions of Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Internet Explorer (version 7 or later), Google Chrome, and Apple Safari.<\/p>

If you have any questions or feedback, please email webmaster@discovermagazine.com<\/a>. Thank you for reading Discover, and we apologize for the inconvenience.<\/p><\/div>

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Let’s say you’re a peat moss plant. Since you’re stuck in one place, and it’s low to the ground where there’s little wind or air turbulence, you have to find a way to shoot your spores way up into the air where they can be dispersed.<\/p>

In reality, mosses have conquered this problem by shooting their spores into the sky at speeds of greater than 30 meters (nearly 100 feet) per second. Their spherical capsules containing the spores deform inward until the pressure forces a ferocious explosion to propel spores at that velocity. But even this is not enough—air would slow the spores before they reached a high enough height to get carried away.<\/p>

<\/span>Luckily, Dwight Whitaker and Joan Edwards found that <\/em>the moss plants have another trick, which they published<\/a> in the journal Science<\/em>. After shooting video at 100,000 frames per second, the scientists saw that the plants shoot their spores in a vortex ring, like a tiny mushroom cloud or a smoke ring. The fluid dynamics of the vortex rings allow it to carry those spores through the air much farther than they could travel without it.<\/p>

For plenty more about this, read Ed Yong’s post<\/a> at Not Exactly Rocket Science. But first, watch this short video the researchers made.<\/p>

Related Content:
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Mosses Use Explosive Cannons And Mushroom Clouds To Spread Their Spores<\/a>
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Flowers Change Color And Back Again To Advertise Their Opening Hours<\/a>
80beats: Spores in Mastadon Dung Suggest Humans Didn’t Kill Off Ancient Mammals<\/a>
The Loom: Fungus Opera<\/a><\/p>

Video: <\/em>Clara Hard, Joan Edwards, Dwight Whitaker<\/em><\/p>

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The browser you are currently using does not support the Discover photo galleries. Supported browsers include recent versions of Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Internet Explorer (version 7 or later), Google Chrome, and Apple Safari.If you have any questions or feedback, please … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"limit_modified_date":"","last_modified_date":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25862"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25862\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}