ohhhhohohhoo now THIS is a treat……a case of dumb plant syndrome revealing a forbidden truth……
you see. strawberries are not botanical berries. they’re technically what’s called accessory fruits, meaning that in this case the ‘berry’ part is just an enlarged receptacle. the actual fruits are called achenes, which are the little yellow speckles on the outside of each strawberry and are generally dry, indehiscent, and only contain one seed per fruit (sunflower seeds are a more obvious achene example).
(the above was the best pic i could find showing roughly how the hell this happens, but i’m also going to put this one here because it reads like the strawberry is being publicly shamed for its achene crimes and i think thats hilarious)
so in terms of The Forbidden One up there….either:
1. a mutation or infection confused the the plant and it freaked out and made leaves where fruit was supposed to go (which, to be fair, big mood) or
2. something Happened™ and all the fruits germinated waaaaayyyy earlier than they were supposed to. i….dont have much knowledge about like, strawberry seedlings, but after a brief google search it seems like if they’re all germinating at once they are not like, turning out like normal seedlings. on one hand i suppose this kind of makes sense because holy shit the entire situation like…is NOT normal to begin with, but on the other hand option 1 fits a little better. still, cutting it open would probably give the answer (if it has roots it’s 2, if it doesn’t it’s 1).
on a related note i fucking love plants, man. like. ‘make leaf where fruit go’ followed by casually making leaves where fruit would go is such just like…a plant thing to do. in animals ‘make arm where baby go’ followed by actually making the arm would be absolutely devastating in terms of bodily function, but for this strawberry plant its just like. look at this. its just photosynthesizing. like this plant has fully accepted that it just has new leaves now and has already moved on. like. our soft animal brains could never
Thank you for the science behind the mutant I found a few years ago. I still find it unsettling though…
This adorable little robot is designed to make sure its photosynthesising passenger is well taken care of. It moves towards brighter light if it needs, or hides in the shade to keep cool. When in the light, it rotates to make sure the plant gets plenty of light. It even likes to play with humans.
Oh, and apparently, it gets antsy when it’s thirsty.
The robot is actually an art project called “Sharing Human Technology with Plants” by a roboticist named Sun Tianqi. It’s made from a modified version of a Vincross HEXA robot, and in his own words, it’s purpose is “to explore the relationship between living beings and robots.”
I don’t care if it’s silly. I want one.
Could you imagine a whole greenhouse full of these? I always thought of spaceship greenhouses as big stationary things, but imagine a rotating “sun” and a bundle of little, shuffling planters that come find crew member when their plants are dehydrated.
ifesbob 