When I was doing the "Studying Strong Country" four-person competition, I often encountered a question, which said that the leaves of 111-year-old orchid have a long lifespan, and can be as long as the lifespan of the entire plant, hundreds of thousands of years. I have never seen it before, and I can't believe it, and I always make mistakes in a hurry. I suddenly found its picture online today. When I went in, I found that it was all true!
It has grown silently on the earth for tens of millions of years, but is unknown until 1859 when Austrian Fredrich Wilfitz discovered it in the desert of Angola, Africa.
At this time, it was already independent on our planet and had no relatives. Botanists had to set up a single portal for it, and it became the only plant in the genus of the Centenary Orchid family.
At first glance, the Centennial Orchid looks like a ball of rotten leaves, not like a "tree". In fact, you are not mistaken, because the trunk of the Centennial Orchid is very short and thick, in an inverted cone shape, and the height is generally not more than 50 cm, but its diameter can reach 1.2 meters.
The upper end of its trunk is two shallow cracks, and a huge leathery leaf grows along each side of the crack. The leaves are long and strip-shaped, with most parallel veins, up to 2-3.5 meters long and about 60 cm wide. The base of the leaves can continue to grow, and the top gradually witheres, often breaking to the base to form multiple narrow and long strips, with a lifespan of more than a hundred years, so it is known as the "100-year-old leaves".
A leaf has a longer lifespan than ours. No one has seen it fallen leaves, so this has also made it the name of "the only plant in the world that never falls leaves".
According to research, the reason why its leaves live so long is that in addition to the gradually withering on the top and continuing to grow at the base, the secret is that its specifically reduced rate of cell growth and the construction of internal cell homeostasis make them grow slowly and healthy, and the leaves are highly lignified, which further helps it adapt to the extremely drought environment.
Most of the natural phenomena we cannot see in our lives, and continuous exploration will constantly refresh our cognition.
Although ignorant and fearless, we must be full of awe of unknown things and do not use the one-sided, narrow and insignificant insights in our minds to doubt, deny, and assert what we don’t know. Only in this way can we have dreams, passions, and confidence to explore the unknown world.
(The picture is from the Internet, infringement must be deleted)
