HN Reader

Ever thought you yanked a dandelion out by the entire root? Think again: https://images.wur.nl/digital/collection/coll13/id/676/rec/3

The accursed bindweed: https://images.wur.nl/digital/collection/coll13/id/193/rec/1

Who'd'a'thought I'd come across root drawings from my old university where I studied at the Forestry faculty which produced these.

I was expecting diagrams of a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_system

(There are so many plant metaphors in mathematics!)

Digging up and drawing the root systems of plants might be my dream job, I love digging, plants, and slow methodical tedious work. Anyone hiring? Pinus sylvestris[0] and Quercus robur[1] are good entries with numerous examples to compare. I would love to see a photograph of the exposed roots of their Sequoiadendron giganteum.

[0] https://images.wur.nl/digital/collection/coll13/search/searc...

[1] https://images.wur.nl/digital/collection/coll13/search/searc...

I like to think of a plant’s roots as an analogy for the knowledge required to create something.

As a weird example, a web app may be like the exposed plant above ground while the roots are that developer’s knowledge. The plant is what others see, but the roots are the intricate system that was required to create the plant.

Really neat. I've often wondered about what the unexposed part of trees and plants are.

Like: am I walking on them? Are they tapping down somewhere deep or are they shallow.

The examples on a hill were interesting; I would have thought the extent would be skewed but it was fairly even

Naive question, possibly poorly formed: what is the purpose of the parts of the plant? Eg the leaves are for collecting energy and the flower for reproduction...so is the "thing" that all that work is going to benefit really just the root stem?

I've been doing some small scale basil growing at home using kratky hydroponics in glass jars. It's always interesting to check how the roots have grown and expanded overnight.

Not what I expected, but this is really cool.

From the perspective of a plant... In soil, you have: silt, clay and sand. Plus other plants, fungi, worms, microorganisms, rocks, insects, animals, etc. Each plant needs different nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and others), need different pH levels, can tolerate different salinity, etc. There might be different humidity, precipitation, wind speed, the water tables are different...

I guess all these differences translate into how the root must structurally develop to satisfy all those requirements and constraints.

Was thinking about vectorizing these and using a pen plotter to make some cool art for my wall, but the images are not very high resolution, unfortunately :(

How are these produced? I assume they're not actually digging a giant trench and taking a section, but are the drawings based on measurements of a specific individual in some way?

In any case, very cool to have such a collection.

Came here expecting Dynkin diagrams, got dandelions instead.

Nice link, for anybody coming to the comments first, it isn't a sample of linux system layouts as I thought.

Previously

71 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39974646

16 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29672733

18 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29672733

Wow. What did I just see? Wonderful and so satisfying. Interesting to see that some plants are tiny above ground compared to their existence below ground - plant-cartels :)

I always suspected that rivers are like trees - they also might have a hierarchy of streams (root system) inside the sea. Sometimes this root system is exposed to above "ground" in the form of deltas and streams around them.

Recently there was an exhibition of tree root illustrations by Jitka Klimesova in Prague. I think there's potential for more art emerging from science.

Love this

Another try at seeing root systems:

https://doc.sagemath.org/html/en/reference/combinat/sage/com...

Nb. This isn't about Lie theory.

reminds me alot of patterns from diffusion limited aggregation.

Bonatical plant systems that are lateral or burrow as this vertical way, which as the cross section for water collection is organic rorschach print.

Imagine if there were a consciousness in each of those complex systems.

There's a Mastodon bot for that...

https://stefanbohacek.online/@roots

i thought these were nervous systems until i started reading comments