Somewhere in my checkered past, I learned of the reproductive process of a liverwort and it's such a marvel it ever works that it has stuck in my brain until now.
There was a time when I could do a drunken ramble on the sex life of a liverwort which may even have been amusing or as amusing as drunken rambles ever can be.
(Ed: I've got some Scotch!)
Thanks but never did like the stuff. We will try this one dry.
(Ed: gasp!)
Here's a diagram of the liverwort's sexy bits:
The antheridium grows slowly, rising to the moment, feeling that age-old need. For the asexual version, it knows the waiting gemma cups are aching to receive it, the sacred payload. Then it looks much like the plant kingdom's equivalent of sexual golf. Making it even more improbable is some species need a raindrop to splash on the antheridium so the sperm splash into the gemma cup to complete the hole in one. The existential beauty of this impossible feat is an endless marvel, at least here in the Rockhouse.
Their sexual mode of reproduction is just as remote but not so readily anthropomorphized since the archegonium ever so slowly grows on a stalk as well.
Are we all ready to watch liverworts have sex. We hope so because we're going to roll it anyway.
Here you go for the porno part. For real liverwort sex right before your eyes. All of those little dust molecules ... yep, those are li'l sperm who are thinking about love and, get this, they're bi-flagellate. That means they have two tails so these are some high horsepower li'l spermatozoons. They will land in the pulsing, throbbing archegonia of other liverworts and thereby achieve liverwort bliss.
There was a time when I could do a drunken ramble on the sex life of a liverwort which may even have been amusing or as amusing as drunken rambles ever can be.
(Ed: I've got some Scotch!)
Thanks but never did like the stuff. We will try this one dry.
(Ed: gasp!)
Here's a diagram of the liverwort's sexy bits:
The antheridium grows slowly, rising to the moment, feeling that age-old need. For the asexual version, it knows the waiting gemma cups are aching to receive it, the sacred payload. Then it looks much like the plant kingdom's equivalent of sexual golf. Making it even more improbable is some species need a raindrop to splash on the antheridium so the sperm splash into the gemma cup to complete the hole in one. The existential beauty of this impossible feat is an endless marvel, at least here in the Rockhouse.
Their sexual mode of reproduction is just as remote but not so readily anthropomorphized since the archegonium ever so slowly grows on a stalk as well.
Are we all ready to watch liverworts have sex. We hope so because we're going to roll it anyway.
Here you go for the porno part. For real liverwort sex right before your eyes. All of those little dust molecules ... yep, those are li'l sperm who are thinking about love and, get this, they're bi-flagellate. That means they have two tails so these are some high horsepower li'l spermatozoons. They will land in the pulsing, throbbing archegonia of other liverworts and thereby achieve liverwort bliss.
An existential marvel, I'm tellin' you. How did this silly li'l plant come up with this idea when it is generally worthless and is of almost no use to anything except stabilizing land a little bit.
Note: this isn't to argue against evolution but rather the contrary, to watch it as it happens. They detail more and more of the record as they dig up more stuff but how will they ever figure out how liverworts figured out the craziest sex life of any creatures you are ever likely to discover.
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