
Why some trees evolved to live underground (2014) - hyperpallium
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141103-why-some-trees-live-underground
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logfromblammo
Short answer: wildfires.

Long answer: During an atmospheric CO2 minimum, grasses developed a more
efficient photosynthesis pathway, which gave them a competitive advantage in
recolonizing burnt-out areas. Savannah grasslands were thus able to use fire
as a weapon against forests, taking some land territory from the fringes of
the elder biome every summer. The primarily subsurface trees were just one of
several adaptations to the frequent wildfires in the savannah.

This article may be of interest to those who advocate the intentional use of
fire as a tool for sound land management practice. By preventing or
extinguishing naturally occurring wildfires, humans may be interfering with an
ecological phenomenon that had already existed for millions of years before
_Homo sapiens_ , perhaps with some unexpected negative consequences.

~~~
clock_tower
On fire suppression and fire management, the core problem is this: large
forest fires aren't natural in Europe, and Europe is where the science of
forestry developed. Fire has no legitimate place in French or German forestry;
but needs to have a large place in its American counterpart.

(I don't know if East Asia is a natural-wildfire zone or not; but it sounds
like Africa, or at least East Africa, certainly is.)

~~~
douche
Some North American species require forest fires to reseed[1]. This has some
implications, for instance, with the logging industry - on the west coast,
much more effort goes into replanting after a cut, compared to the east coast,
where the species are not fire-dependent to release their seeds.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serotiny#Fire-
mediated_serotin...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serotiny#Fire-
mediated_serotiny)

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gumby
The article didn't explain more about Geoxyles so I did some research to see
how they could photosynthesize adequately. It's funny that all the photographs
online are of the above-ground fragments of the tree, sort of like icebergs.
In any case to a human it looks like a deeply interconnected set of shrubs
with a shared root system; these things must grow relatively slowly as they
don't have much of an area (proportionately to most plants) to expose to the
sun and air. But otherwise they are unremarkable trees, which I find
remarkable!

