For thousands of years, human beings have prided themselves on being the most advanced species on the earth, believing that they dominate everything on the earth and wantonly plunder the earth's resources. As everyone knows, there is a class of species, more powerful than humans, in the evolution of hundreds of millions of years to make themselves extremely "unpalatable", "killed" a large number of ancient plant-eating animals, this is the big "bug" in nature, this species is grass.
Grass is a very humble plant, professionally called herb. There are many kinds of herbaceous plants, and the number of herbaceous plants is also very large, and there are now about 300,000 species of herbaceous plants on the earth, accounting for about one-fifth of the earth's land area, and even in cold areas such as the Antarctic and the Arctic, herbs can be seen.
Herbs can be found everywhere, such as roadside weeds, weeds in the field, and mimosas that humans like to grow, which are all herbs. In addition, there is a special class of herbs, that is, bamboo. Although bamboo grows as tall as a tree, it is a solid herb and has nothing to do with woody plants.
When did the herbs come into being?
On November 17, 2018, an international scientific team inadvertently discovered a tiny silicified structure while studying dinosaur fecal fossils found in central India, which scientists said was likely an herb that dinosaurs ate at that time. This discovery confirms that at least during the Cretaceous period when dinosaurs were prevalent, herbaceous plants existed and have become the ration of large plant eaters, and indirectly prove that herbaceous plants were in a very prosperous state during the Cretaceous period. Herbaceous plants should have appeared earlier than the Cretaceous period, and conservatively speaking, herbaceous plants existed for at least 65 million years.
Exactly when the herb was produced is not yet evidence. However, according to the excavated fossils, it can be seen that the earliest herbaceous plants adopted a "single-handed" way of survival, and the range of occurrence was not dense. Because before the advent of herbs, woody plants and some ferns had long existed, and they occupied most of the land, so that herbaceous plants could only survive in the cracks.
Later, several mass extinctions occurred, and ferns suffered devastating blows and gradually withdrew from the stage of history. Herbaceous plants seized the opportunity to face the difficulties, quickly occupied a large area of land, and began to "live in groups". A few years ago, a large number of 30 million-year-old primitive herbaceous plant fossils were unearthed in Chile, which is the first time that herbaceous plants have been found to grow in groups, indicating that large areas of grassland have appeared 30 million years ago.
The emergence of grassland for those plant predators to provide rich food, some rodents began to breed in large quantities, and then mammals gradually appeared, the team of plant-eaters continued to expand, a large number of herbaceous plants were eaten as plants, for a time, the reproductive speed of herbaceous plants could not catch up with the speed of being eaten. Therefore, herbaceous plants "thought" of a way, since they could not stop the plant-eating animals from nibbling on them, they could only change themselves. So herbaceous plants began to evolve, single-handedly "killing" a large number of ancient plant-eating animals.
How did herbs evolve bugs? What's so special about it?
In order to get rid of the fate of the extinction of planted animals, herbs find ways to make themselves "unpalatable". They first make themselves extraordinarily hard, so that plant-eaters struggle to chew. At first, in order to fill their stomachs, plant predators may still endure, but after a long time, they automatically abandon this hard-to-chew plant and turn to look for softer plants.
Secondly, herbs make themselves extra sharp. Everyone may have the experience of being cut through the skin by a piece of paper, and it is difficult to believe that a thin piece of paper can be so lethal. Herbs are the same, they have become sharp in the long process of evolution, whether it is animals or humans, passing by it will accidentally be scratched by it. Plant-eating animals are also intellectual, as long as they are scratched a few times, they will automatically list these herbs as dangerous, and the next time they encounter them, they will be far away, let alone take them as food.
Moreover, herbaceous plants are different from ferns and woody plants, their stems are "grassy stems", which are distributed with many small vascular bundles, and the outermost layer is an unusually tough mechanical tissue, just like the silk of lentil carob, thin and hard, and cannot be bitten, and if you are not careful, you will get stuck in the mouth, and seriously you can get stuck in the throat. Plant-eaters also know that this herb is not tasty and difficult to swallow, so they stop eating them.
In addition, herbaceous plants have always maintained their small plant status, unlike woody plants, which desperately grow higher in order to receive more and better sunlight. As the saying goes, the higher the more conspicuous, plant-eaters see such tall and novel plants and turn to taste their delicacies, while the herbs that grow on the low ground receive less and less attention and are eventually preserved.
Another important feature is that herbs can regenerate. Although I have "thought" of many ways, I can't escape the fate of being eaten in the end. Because as species evolve, the number of animals increases, and plant-eating animals must feed on herbs if they want to survive. So, in order to make themselves "sustainable", herbs have developed renewable abilities.
In order to alleviate land desertification, people took the way to ban grazing, relying on the renewable ability of the herb itself to restore itself, which is the specific manifestation of the regenerative function of the herb. In addition to this, the grass that has been burned by the fire will also sprout new shoots until the next spring, which is why the herbs can continue to grow.
Herbaceous plants are changing themselves so that many ancient plants can no longer feed on them, and at that time there were no other plants that could replace grass for those animals to eat, so some ancient plants were starved to death. But the herb itself has survived to the present, and it has to be said that there is indeed a hand.
Not only that, but the herbs not only killed plant-eating animals, but also easily took down humans. Herbs are used in a wide range of ways, and food is closely related to humans. Some of the foods that humans eat belong to herbaceous plants, such as wheat, barley, corn, sorghum, etc., many of which are staple foods of human beings. Moreover, herbaceous plants are still an important part of the biological chain, and animals such as horses, cattle, and sheep still feed on grass.
Herbs have also made outstanding contributions in terms of tools, and the straw shoes worn by people in the past and the bamboo baskets and baskets used now are basically woven by herbs, which greatly facilitates people's production and life.
Seemingly simple herbs did not expect to have such a big effect, which shows that every existence in nature has a certain truth, and we must not underestimate them.
Resources:
Li Tingting, Zhou Lishan, Liu Bingwan, "Research on the Coevolution between Herbivores and Plants", CNKI 2010-05-10
Guiming Wang, Wenqin Zhong, Qingqiang Zhou, Interaction System between Plants and Plant-Eaters CNKI 1994-12-11
Author: Xiao Abe Review: Henna Proofreader: Plum