

A Plant That Thrives When Used as a Toilet - bbg
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/science/16obpitcher.html

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yardie
There are few things plants like more than animal and human waste. I did an
experiment in highschool about the filtering ability of native plant species.
This was Florida in the mid-nineties. SE Water management district gave me a
and a few biologists a 2 acre plot of land near the waste water processing
plant and let me have at it. Using treated grey water, a bog was started at
one end with rows and rows of sawgrass. The water that made it to the end was
crystal clear.

After the experiments were done and went off to college, to pursue CS of all
things. The district sold the land to developers who built yet another
unneeded warehouse/stripmall in South Florida.

Later on the state and Fed went on to a billion dollar buying spree of tracts
of land through the middle of the state. Those experiments are still
continuing there 10 years after I published my results.

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DTrejo
It would be awesome if someone could engineer houseplants like these, except
on steroids, so they could handle larger loads more quickly.

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Tichy
Why can't the whole house clean itself? Nature manages it, somehow. There
could be ants from the pharmacy to replace hovering and so on ;-)

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cubicle67
It's called a lemon tree, and used to be a standard sight in just about every
Australian backyard

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sethg
Is _that_ why the song says "the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to
eat"?

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mynameishere
Showing your age there...

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sethg
I learned the song when I was just a lad of ten.

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furyg3
_“Form follows function,” Dr. Moran said. N. lowii’s bowls “even look like
toilets,” he added, “though we were too polite to say that in the paper.”_

Take note, students! There's no hope of those journal articles becoming less
boring anytime soon. The writing process kills even modest attempts at on-
topic humor...

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tdavis
I find it somehow cool that there are people who have studied poop-eating
plants for 20 years. Are there really 20 years worth of knowledge there?

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aristus
Yeah, but it's all crap. :D We're only just discovering the contributions of
plants like this, usually when they disappear, eg mangrove forests in Florida.

