These little friends got a ride home with me from the gym the other morning, stuck into the spiderwebs that cling to the side mirrors. There were more all across the front of the car, stuck in the small valley between the folded windshield wipers and the glass. I was delighted—could this be seed dispersal in action? In the absence of hooking into fur or feather, they’d found something else that worked: a minivan. (Does this count as carpooling?)
Creative seed transport isn’t always whimsical—or wanted. A paper this month in PNAS followed native and non-native plantains and found that these plants can break ecological rules and thrive far outside their native range. They became even more genetically diverse in far-away lands, where only a few seeds may have traveled to start the plantain explosion, than in large groups of plantains back home.
Oh, dear little ones on my mirror, I should probably feel differently about you. Still, I love how you found these small spaces to land, and how you hung on for the ride.
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Question: should I wash my car more often?
Bonus: my favorite song when I was 16!