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Comment by hardmath123 | Hacker News Reader

I believe the heat of a wildfire is literally the trigger for the cone to open up and release the redwood's seeds! (I don't know the exact mechanism for this, though.)

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I don't know. I know there is a pine that does that, but I'm in rough shape and trying to stay out of trouble, which is challenging for me under the best of circumstances.

I remember the pine cone of I think a yellow pine species opens up at 170 degrees, so it typically opens in response to fire. A quick google suggests it is called a Jack Pine.

Hurricanes are also thought to be responsible for bringing fly species to islands and new islands end up having bird poo on them with seeds the birds ingested. Plants do this intentionally to let birds spread their seeds because birds lack teeth, so the seeds don't get chewed up in the process.

Hot peppers are intended to be eaten by birds but not other species. They are hot as a form of chemical warfare against things they don't want eating them. Chocolate and maybe also coffee is bitter like it is to kill ants and if you have sufficiently dark chocolate (in, say, a tent), it doesn't attract ants. Milk chocolate attracts ants because of the sugar, but the cocoa itself is ant poison.

Anyway, little islands form from volcanos and they start sticking up out of the ocean a little and they become resting places for birds and the bird poo is the first soil and fertilizer on these barren volcanic rocks and then coconut trees are typically the first trees because the coconut will float across the ocean without being killed by the salt water and land on some newly formed little island with a bit of bird poo and a few plants and it will take root. I think no other tree does that.

If you get rid of all "disasters" entirely, you kill off a lot of stuff. Mother Nature or "mother earth" has fascinating and complex ways of letting life find a way and fire laying waste to some portion of the forest and leaving in its wake fertile soil and opening the cones of some pine species is just one of the fascinating ways she does that.

Anyway, I have big plans to shut up on HN and attempt to go behave now by being elsewhere. Ciao.

Why shut up? Your post was very informative and thanks to you I learned a lot of things!

However, I bet that the scale of the wildfires in our apocalyptic late-Anthropocene is something hardly seen before in healthy forests... all these species would be better off with less of it.

I have a medical condition and I was extremely frazzled. I can't judge if I'm making sense or not when I'm really frazzled. I've napped a bit, so I'm less frazzled now, but I'm still dealing with a lot of stress, as is often the case.

You were perfectly making sense! ^^

I hope you are better now, I am sorry to hear that you had medical problems... Do not give up! Your contributions are helpful.

I concur with henearkr: that was fascinating. Thanks for contributing to the discussion.

That's an interesting concept. Normally fire is a healthy part of the ecosystem, but as humans we've changed the context in which fires occur (e.g. by reducing naturally occurring fire and by making droughts more common) such that when they do occur they are more destructive than many species are able to handle. If that is the case, I wonder if there is a way we could reintroduce fires to the system (i.e. controlled burns) in such a way that it doesn't completely destroy the ecosystem.

> late-Anthropocene

Is it always the late-Anthropocene, or do you know something?

Lol. I am just reading a novel set in the future and where our current period is referred as such, because, at the end of this climate crisis and huge extinction event, humans decide to restore the biosphere to its last post-glacial state. The notion that the Anthropocene could end is interesting though, it may be a happy (like in the novel) or a scary end.

I'm intrigued. What's the book called?

It's the Xeelee Sequence, by Stephen Baxter. The focus on the late-Anthropocene "Bottleneck" is in the volume called "Transcendent". The end of the age of farming is located near the 27th century.

After they restored the biosphere (or did their best) though, more dire events take place in the Solar System and on Earth (but it's not only the fault of humans, so maybe not technically an Anthropocene again).

I believe you are referring to Lodgepole Pines

There are quite a large number of pines that do this.

Another example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_pine

The general phenomenon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serotiny

oh wow thank you both for generalizing the phenomenon for me-- as an idahoan my world was a bit to small, I guess =)

You're thinking of the coast redwood's relative, the giant sequoia. Fire dries out the cones causing the seeds to release.

seems to be the same tree? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoia_sempervirens

edit: ah, Giant Sequoia is genus Sequoiadendron -- but both seem to have cones open by fire

I think I saw this in a zombie movie once

The Mountain Ash trees of south east Australia are similar in that the bushfire helps release seeds. These are also one of the tallest tree species on the planet.

https://vicflora.rbg.vic.gov.au/static/interplay-with-fire

Almost all Eucalyptus are like this

There may well be a mechanism by which fire increases redwood germination, but coast redwoods produce many, many viable seedlings without fire.

Source: I have seen them!

Not just a trigger. The heat itself is what opens the cone.

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