{"id":39712,"date":"2011-09-25T15:48:26","date_gmt":"2011-09-25T15:48:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/newly-discovered-plant-bows-down-and-buries-its-own-seeds-80beats\/"},"modified":"2011-09-25T15:48:26","modified_gmt":"2011-09-25T15:48:26","slug":"newly-discovered-plant-bows-down-and-buries-its-own-seeds-80beats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/astronomy\/newly-discovered-plant-bows-down-and-buries-its-own-seeds-80beats.php","title":{"rendered":"Newly Discovered Plant Bows Down and Buries Its Own Seeds | 80beats"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"A botanist has discovered a new species of plant<\/a> in eastern Brazil whose branches bend down upon bearing fruit and deposit seeds on the ground, often burying them in a covering of soft soil or moss. This trick is an example of geocarpy<\/a>, a rare adaptation to survival in harsh or short-lived environments with small favorable patches. The adaptation ensures seedlings germinate near their parents, helping them stay within the choice spots or microclimates in which they thrive. One well-known practitioner of geocarpy is the peanut, which also buries its fruit in the soil<\/a> [PDF].<\/p>

<\/span>The tiny, inch-tall plant was first spied by the scientist’s handyman while he “hunched down behind a shrub for a common human activity,” according to the news release<\/a>. He then brought the strange plant to the attention of botanist Alex Popovkin, who has found and categorized over 800 plant species to date in Bahia, Brazil<\/a>. The team dubbed it Spigelia genuflexa<\/em>, named after the act of genuflection<\/a>, or kneeling to the ground.<\/p>

Reference: <\/strong>Alex Popovkin, Katherine G. Mathews, José Carlos Mendes Santos, M. Carmen Molina, Lena Struwe. Spigelia genuflexa<\/em> (Loganiaceae), a new geocarpic species from northeastern Bahia, Brazil. PhytoKeys<\/em>, 2011; 6 (0): 47 DOI: 10.3897\/phytokeys.6.1654<\/a><\/p>

Image credit: Alex Popovkin<\/a><\/em><\/p>

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A botanist has discovered a new species of plant in eastern Brazil whose branches bend down upon bearing fruit and deposit seeds on the ground, often burying them in a covering of soft soil or moss. This trick is an example … 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-39712","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\/39712"}],"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=39712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39712\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}