NotHardUp1
What? Me? Really?
OK, I admit to being less than curious about algae in the past. My interest in anything chlorphyllic was limited to plants and most often native plants.
But, watching some YouTube videos on the microcosmos, I strayed into a question of what purpose Barium and Calcium Sulfate crystals serve in a vacuole in Closterium. While tugging on that thread, I found in turn a random comment about seaweed not being a plant.
Well, shiver me timbers! I guess I was "deceived" by lazy assumption that anything labelled a "weed" was some form of a plant. Bad assumption. Also, my perception of algae was that they were unicellular. Wrong! Can be, don't have to be.
Kelp "forests" just don't fill the bill when it comes to meeting the full criteria to be plants. Maybe that's a Class I-Y deferral.
I feel rather stupid. I've been making crude remarks about the pond scum outside my company's division headquarters where I work. There is a business park pond that is hideously maintained, with no fountain or pump, so it just grows tremendous amounts of algae during the warm months. It is probably affected the flock of Canada geese that swim and crap in it. Now I worry that the algae has more sophisticated relatives out at sea who could take revenge. I may not go on that cruise after all.
Ladies and gentlemen, the very tiny but Barium-confining and crystal jiggling Closterium:
An amateur site about Closterium and one man's discoveries: https://iainpetrie.typepad.com/the_four_ages_of_sand/2009/06/desmids-closterium-statoliths.html
Another cite explaining why kelp is not a plant: https://www.learner.org/courses/essential/life/session2/closer_protist.html
But, watching some YouTube videos on the microcosmos, I strayed into a question of what purpose Barium and Calcium Sulfate crystals serve in a vacuole in Closterium. While tugging on that thread, I found in turn a random comment about seaweed not being a plant.
Well, shiver me timbers! I guess I was "deceived" by lazy assumption that anything labelled a "weed" was some form of a plant. Bad assumption. Also, my perception of algae was that they were unicellular. Wrong! Can be, don't have to be.
Kelp "forests" just don't fill the bill when it comes to meeting the full criteria to be plants. Maybe that's a Class I-Y deferral.
I feel rather stupid. I've been making crude remarks about the pond scum outside my company's division headquarters where I work. There is a business park pond that is hideously maintained, with no fountain or pump, so it just grows tremendous amounts of algae during the warm months. It is probably affected the flock of Canada geese that swim and crap in it. Now I worry that the algae has more sophisticated relatives out at sea who could take revenge. I may not go on that cruise after all.
Ladies and gentlemen, the very tiny but Barium-confining and crystal jiggling Closterium:
An amateur site about Closterium and one man's discoveries: https://iainpetrie.typepad.com/the_four_ages_of_sand/2009/06/desmids-closterium-statoliths.html
Another cite explaining why kelp is not a plant: https://www.learner.org/courses/essential/life/session2/closer_protist.html
