Evolution Under Foot

Tweet

We go about busy lives at work, shopping, and playing blissfully unaware that there is literally evolution happening in a neglected lawn. There is a plant becoming a new species growing there. * The formal name of the plant is Crepis sancta. We know them to be dandelions. * To adapt and make sure more of it's seedlings survive, it is switching to heavier seeds that fall to close by dirt rather than the wind driven light seeds that will most likely land on tarmac or cement. This change took about 12 generations, or five years as the Human lives. * Is this risky? Yes. The new plants evolving can be heading toward an evolutionary dead end. That is a risk many life forms before them took, and many after will take. * This isn't the first course of evolution this plant quietly took underfoot. The common dandelion used to be a long stemmed, tall species. That put it's flowers and seedpods at risk of lawn mowers on well manicured lawns. The tall dandelion is no longer common. It now grows only in neglected areas where a lawnmower won't menace. * The lawn now sports ground hugging dandelions that are seldom taller than the grass itself, out of range of a lawnmowers blades. To eliminate now, the lawn owner has to do a determined pull at the roots of this pernicious little unassuming winner of evolution. * BBC story~ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7277057.stm