Re: Contractile Roots

From: hermine <hermine at endangeredspecies.com> on 1997.09.09 at 21:10:54(1203) At 08:51 AM 9/9/97 -0500, Sue Zunino wrote: >Could this be what happens? > >The bulb puts out contractile roots as stablizers, the plant grows, the bulb >wastes away, the weight of the plant causes it to settle into the wasted >bulb's hole, the plant dies then rebuilds it's new bulb at a deeper level >where the next contractile root growth anchors it, and the process begins all >over again. +More Well, shoot me if i am wrong, but the only truly contraile tissue in plants (as in it contracts like animal muscle), has been found in certain strangler figs. they start out as epiphytes, put down aerial roots into the ground and them PULL until the host tree is a bent, humpy misshapen and dead mess. Last i head this action was being studied in some wonderment. Many plants with some weight sink into the earth. Cycads do. Now, it is the habit of some Haworthias to grow not as above ground rosettes, but as level-with the-surface plants, and one must repot them on a regular basis. on the other had, whenever i do cosmetic repotting there is the dead old main stem and dead roots, rather as if that part of the plant was deciduous. it is hollow. conceivably the weight of the plant causes it to sink ito that void. hermine

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