I reckon you could skip spraying it if you were going to eat it anyway.
Did you know that wheat in the US is sprayed with glyphosate right before harvest? It causes all the wheat to dry evenly, avoiding the need to cut down the wheat and windrow it for drying. This means extra weeks in the growing season to squeeze another crop in.
Instead of getting rid of them, I was hoping to find seeds for Russian dandelions. I'd like to grow some. Haven't been able to find any for sale though...
The above comment was pointing out that each 1 centimeter is slightly less than 0.4 inches. If you want to be more precise, each centimeter is about 0.3937 inches.
Always good to have a weed puller in your toolshed. A stand-up puller, specifically, that operates as a lever, allowing it to first grab deeply and then through a rotation of the handle it pulls out quite a bit of the root system. A lifesaver if you have a rain garden which is really just a synonym for weed garden.
I've never used a bad one, although I wouldn't class any of them as anything stellar. All of them have looked like a snake's twisted tongue.
Using them depends on the delicate combination and application of brute force and technique. If your technique and brute force is up to spec, a crowbar works as a makeshift weed puller.
How are these produced? I assume they're not actually digging a giant trench and taking a section, but are the drawings based on measurements of a specific individual in some way?
They usually are. It’s a process akin to archaeology where they have to carefully wash away the dirt from the root system, measuring as they go. The problem with this method is that it's hard to reconstruct the entire 3d structure of bigger plants like trees so a lot of the root drawings on the site don’t accurately show how deep they go. It’s much easier with small plants where the researcher can control the soil used.
Modern methods like xray CT or ground penetrating radar can do it nondestructively in the field but they’re usually expensive to set up compared to just sending some grad students to dig.
> you'd get an accurate image of a very distorted root system
At the very least, you've taken a 3D system and reduced it to 2D. Additionally, you're exposing not only the root system but the entire microbiome around them to light and, almost certainly, unless you were incredibly meticulous about sealing, oxygen.
A few ways. This particular project is doing it by hand and very tedious.
The traditional way of transplanting large trees while keeping the root system intact is with a hydrovac. A machine the size of a jet engine that liquifies the soil with water and then vacuums it up. [1]
More recent developments have tried using an AirSpade which doesn’t use water but compressed air to blow apart and then suck the soil without making a slurry which is better as the soil can be redeposited in the same hole rather than discarded[2]
I'm not sure that either of these methods count as traditional.
Air spades in particular are primarily used for rootwork, not transplanting. Bareroot methods are used for smaller trees. Bare rooting leaves roots in a very vulnerable state, so doing it on larger trees you intend to move and keep alive is a serious logistical challenge.
The most traditional method I can think of is "ball and burlap" where root balls are cut free in the field, and retrieved later in the season for final packaging.
The context of HN is interesting. We see the word “root” and immediately assume it has to do with a filesystem or math… but not actual, physical roots haha
I like to think of a plant’s roots as an analogy for the knowledge required to create something.
As a weird example, a web app may be like the exposed plant above ground while the roots are that developer’s knowledge. The plant is what others see, but the roots are the intricate system that was required to create the plant.
Digging up and drawing the root systems of plants might be my dream job, I love digging, plants, and slow methodical tedious work. Anyone hiring? Pinus sylvestris[0] and Quercus robur[1] are good entries with numerous examples to compare. I would love to see a photograph of the exposed roots of their Sequoiadendron giganteum.
From the perspective of a plant... In soil, you have: silt, clay and sand. Plus other plants, fungi, worms, microorganisms, rocks, insects, animals, etc. Each plant needs different nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and others), need different pH levels, can tolerate different salinity, etc. There might be different humidity, precipitation, wind speed, the water tables are different...
I guess all these differences translate into how the root must structurally develop to satisfy all those requirements and constraints.
Wow. What did I just see? Wonderful and so satisfying. Interesting to see that some plants are tiny above ground compared to their existence below ground - plant-cartels :)
I always suspected that rivers are like trees - they also might have a hierarchy of streams (root system) inside the sea. Sometimes this root system is exposed to above "ground" in the form of deltas and streams around them.
Naive question, possibly poorly formed: what is the purpose of the parts of the plant? Eg the leaves are for collecting energy and the flower for reproduction...so is the "thing" that all that work is going to benefit really just the root stem?
The answer to pretty much every biological "why" question is: because it reproduced. It seems simplistic, but really, a thing is here and alive because its ancestors reproduced.
Your version of the question has surprising perspective- I think you are asking what the "it" of the plant is. That's an interesting personification of a plant. I think it points to the fact that plants may be safer underground- for anchoring, for not being eaten, for getting shielded from harsh elements.
Isn't reproduction the point? The roots exist to obtain water, nutrients, minerals; leaves gather energy from the sun; this is used to grow fruit, or whatever is used for reproduction
For plants, and trees too I guess, you can just grow your own, dig it up after a while, and inspect for yourself.
Today I finished picking tomatoes from my tomato plants and pulled them up to avoid them rotting in the field as the temperature goes down. It was curious to see how the root systems varied both between the two tomato varieties I had planted, the location of the plant in relation to surrounding grass, and the type of soil they ended up in.
I've been doing some small scale basil growing at home using kratky hydroponics in glass jars. It's always interesting to check how the roots have grown and expanded overnight.
Was thinking about vectorizing these and using a pen plotter to make some cool art for my wall, but the images are not very high resolution, unfortunately :(
Recently there was an exhibition of tree root illustrations by Jitka Klimesova in Prague. I think there's potential for more art emerging from science.
