Why is everything an orchid? | Hacker News Reader

Why is everything an orchid?

worldsensorium.com

94 pointsdnetesn48 comments

I know it’s a fine point, but I think it’s important: the title is “ON The Origin of Species…” Omitting the “On” gives it a different sense that I think contributes to the mistaken belief the book is about convincing us that evolution happens, rather than describing how it happens.

I used to think of orchids as something exotic, then I realized there's over 20 species of orchids native to where I live in Northern California. Bog orchids, Lady's Slippers, Coralroots, Twayblades, Fairy Slippers, and the Phantom orchid, among others.

I thought everything was Brassica oleracea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brassica_oleracea

\s: https://xkcd.com/2827/

Everything is a:

  - broccoli
  - pea
  - rose
  - asparagus
  - crab

Oh yeah? I recently discovered that the Teak tree is of the Mint family (Lamiales) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teak (take that, redwoods).

https://twitter.com/faineg/status/1386522223901618177/photo/...

Sounds like Orchids are the Crabs of the plant word.

It's exactly the other way around.

While every animal seems to eventually become like a crab, orchids seem to eventually become like every plant and then some more.

If crabs are the terminal object in the category of evolvable animals, orchids are an initial object in the category of evolvable plants?

> every animal seems to eventually become like a crab

Say what??? Reference needed. I can think of plenty of animals that are nothing like crabs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation

It comes from a recent clickbaity headline, "Why does everything keep evolving into crabs?".

Crab-like creatures have independently evolved a bunch of times from different crustaceans. Nobody is saying that fish keep evolving into crabs.

Nobody? GP said "While every animal seems to eventually become like a crab...". That's not nobody. I think you'll find a lot of people online who have gotten the "crustacean carcinisation" idea wrong and think it applies to all animals.

Fine, fine - I will clarify so as not to get dinged by the pedants.

Nobody in the scientific community is saying that fish keep evolving into crabs.

I think you'll find there's no such thing as a fish.

Source: Pedant.

But... what about humans???

okay then...

Nobody in the scientific community except humans is saying that fish keep evolving into crabs.

Well, the joke was about whether humans keep evolving into crabs, but I think I crashed the joke's landing. :)

Why you think rust is so populare?!

See: Zoidberg

It's a popular over-generalization, made purposefully for humor.

They aren't crabs yet, but they might be, in a billion years.

I'm a crab and I can type on computers.

Given the right spacing of keys, I suspect a crab could manage a pretty high wpm rating. Assuming the brain could keep up of course.

Sort of like tap dancing on the FAO Schwartz piano (Big), but with six legs per creature instead of two.

Some of them retire to Gila Bend, AZ: https://www.weirduniverse.net/blog/comments/gila_bend

Article doesn't appear to be presenting a similar thesis at all, nearly the opposite. It doesn't have much to say about non-orchid plants, certainly not that they evolve to be orchid-like. Orchids are famous for being unusual and unusually diverse, that's what the article lingers on.

A better example of crabs in the plant world are trees.

There’s no such thing as a tree (phylogenetically) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29621646

Yes, sounds more like Brassica oleracea to me, lol.

No, not really. Brassica oleracea is a single species manually cultivated by humans into variety of forms that are known by different names. Orchids are a huge family of plants. If anything, you should compare them to all Brassicaceae. A quick refresher: Brassicaceae family aside from that notorious Brassica oleracea also contains such things as mustard and horseradish, and even Brassica genus alone contains a whole lot of things that are completely unlike all these Brassica oleracea varieties. And Brassicaceae family is 5 times smaller than Orchidaceae, in terms of number of species.

So this is a silly comparison. Talking about all "orchids" is talking about like 15% of all flowering plants. In fact, I would say that even the mere fact that somebody knows a common English word to name all "orchids" kinda suggests that the family is not that diverse… Except, an even larger family is Asteraceae, and they probably look even more like each other.

(That said, I actually have no idea why all these broccoli, kale, etc are still considered a single species. Can you really easily cross-bred modern specimens of broccoli and kale?)

> Can you really easily cross-bred modern specimens of broccoli and kale?

I know that one particular pairing of broccoli and kale did cross-breed, in my father's garden, many years ago. At least, that's what he (a PhD biologist) told me. They shot up into flower stalks right away, and neither leaves nor florets were edible.

Broccoli and cauliflower would interbreed, as well. Sometimes their piebald florets were edible, but usually they were terribly bitter.

They were a curiousity, no more.

> and neither leaves nor florets were edible.

How did he know that? Did he try to eat them?

Yup! We tried to eat them. He's a scientist, and we were curious kids. Why wouldn't we?

Not only CAN you cross-breed them, they do it by themselves, and generally just end up being wild-type, which is what you see all over California. Just a kind of spindly plant with no elaborate leaves or flower clusters, greenish yellow flowers.

To add context, animals across the world have evolved independently to resemble crabs.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation

Crustaceans, not animals in general, and there are also examples of crab-like species that have evolved away from crab features. This is one of those popsci memes that is wrong and just won't die.

> Everything evolved to a crab

Cant' wait until this people eventually discover the Coleoptera

Absolutely love orchids, they're pretty abundant where I live and even within the region the variety is huge! They make fantastic house plants, very low maintenance assuming your climate is appropriate, but please source them ethically.

Wait until the article comes out that most of the vegetables we eat are cabbages.

- kale

- cauliflower

- broccoli

- turnips

- bok choy

- horseradish

- rapeseed

- mustard

and on and on and on it's wild

I planted some turnips as a cover crop a couple years ago, and one morning we looked out to find an Asian lady with her kid out there just nonchalantly cutting leaves along the sidewalk.

Which is how I learned that big chunks of the south and of Asia eat turnip greens.

(also you forgot collard, and brussel sprouts, but I'll give you a pass on the latter)

Do most pepople not? Greens are a staple in the southern usa.

I’ve never seen them for sale in the PNW. Other greens but not turnip. Chard all the time, collards, bok choi and friends. Mustard once in a while. Relatively sure I haven’t even seen turnip greens at Asian grocery stores here either.

I imagine she felt like she hit the lottery. I wonder if her kid had ever had them before. She was pretty young.

My favorite part of this fact, is that a surprising number of different brassica family vegetables are just one species: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brassica_oleracea#Cultivars

It's cultivated, so literally the opposite of wild ;)

you might find this interesting

https://www.khaydock.com/evolving.php

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