In WaPo Sarah Kaplan reports on the work explaining the impossible ghosts of the forests – albino redwoods:
Redwoods can also clone themselves, further complicating scientists’ understanding of them. Vast rings of related plants communicate via their roots, and during the hard months of winter and early spring, they’ll distribute nutrients evenly among themselves. Scientists have spilled dye onto trees at one end of a grove and traced it through the root network all the way to the other side. …
This collaboration lasts only until summer comes. Then every tree, sprout and branch must fend for itself. Those that can’t photosynthesize enough sugar are cut off from the shared root system and discarded during what’s known as the autumn “needle drop.” …
But [biologist Zane] Moore looks down as he explains how albino redwoods take advantage of their shared root system by siphoning off sugars produced by their healthy neighbors. “A lot of people thought they were parasites,” he said. “They even called them ‘vampire trees.’ ” …
Moore sought help from his fellow redwood fans up and down the California coast, soliciting clippings from both albino trees and their healthy hosts.
He found that the albino needles were saturated with what should have been a deadly cocktail of cadmium, copper and nickel. On average, white needles contained twice as many parts per million of these noxious heavy metals as their green counterparts; some had enough metals to kill them ten times over. Moore thinks faulty stomata — the pores through which plants exhale water — are responsible: plants that lose liquid faster must also drink more, meaning that the albino trees have twice as much metal-laden water running through their systems.
“It seems like the albino trees are just sucking these heavy metals up out of the soil,” Moore said. “They’re basically poisoning themselves.”
So they load up on nutrients from other trees in exchange for uptake of poisonous materials from the soil through which the redwoods’ roots intertwine. Analogous to mycoremediation.
Wow. I wonder if redwoods should be considered a single organism or a collection of organisms.
