EXCUSE ME THERE IS A PLANT THAT CAN MIMIC FAKE PLANTS?????
IT'S CALLED A BOQUILA TRIOFOLIOLATA AND IT'S FUCKING WITH MY BRAIN
IT APPARENTLY CAN MIMIC OTHER PLANTS AND AT FIRST I WAS LIKE "oh cool man it must take it's genetic code and copy it or feel the roots or something like that!! :3"
AND THEN I READ AN ARTICLE ON IT AND THESE FUCKING PARAGRAPHS HIT ME LIKE A BUS
LIKE READ THIS SHIT
WHAT THE FUCK MOTHER NATURE
I went to find the article. It's fascinating.
In retrospect, consider the number 1 thing every grade-schooler knows about plants is they take in light, the idea they might be able to see should not wreck my shit as hard as it does
What's REALLY weird about this is that there's no clear advantage to doing it. If they'd evolved to mimick a certain other plant specifically, that'd be one thing, but just whatever is near them is seemingly pointless. It's not just that they're doing something we didn't know they could do, it's that they're doing it for absolutely no benefit that we can hypothesize.













