> We didn't even understand basic things about trees till like a few decades ago
'We' don't even understand basic things about trees now, because we're operating on old information.
I'm hearing soil scientists griping and sniping about their peers dragging their feet in acknowledging new research. The future is here, but unevenly distributed.
Elaine Ingham has a sometimes-awkward dislike for actinobacteria (formerly called actinomyces, because it looks like a fungus but turns out is not). She has complained on more than one occasion about people still calling it actinomyces. They are a useful microbe, but from a soil metabolism standpoint bacteria tend to be in the 'minus' column and fungi in the 'plus' column. If you've ever done a budget and put something in the wrong column, you know how quickly that can screw up your conclusions.
> If trees needed to photosynthesise faster they would already be doing it.
I recall someone discovering a while back that chloroplasts have a defense mechanism that reduces photon absorption when transpiration can't keep up with waste (heat?) production from photosynthesis. If they stayed on they would fry themselves, so they shut down by degrees. Whether that's a global optimization or a local one I couldn't say. But if the leaf is the bottleneck, then plants could in fact be photosynthesizing faster. At least during midday.
If someone could select or engineer more efficient pathways, then it could stay 'on' for longer. A chloroplast that produces less waste heat. A more efficient capillary system for bringing water and removing sugars. Maybe even something as simple as min-maxing soil moisture so the leaves have as much water as they could ever want.
Or, it could make a tree that cannot reach the canopy in an established forest, because it's overtrained for full sun.
'We' don't even understand basic things about trees now, because we're operating on old information.
I'm hearing soil scientists griping and sniping about their peers dragging their feet in acknowledging new research. The future is here, but unevenly distributed.
Elaine Ingham has a sometimes-awkward dislike for actinobacteria (formerly called actinomyces, because it looks like a fungus but turns out is not). She has complained on more than one occasion about people still calling it actinomyces. They are a useful microbe, but from a soil metabolism standpoint bacteria tend to be in the 'minus' column and fungi in the 'plus' column. If you've ever done a budget and put something in the wrong column, you know how quickly that can screw up your conclusions.
> If trees needed to photosynthesise faster they would already be doing it.
I recall someone discovering a while back that chloroplasts have a defense mechanism that reduces photon absorption when transpiration can't keep up with waste (heat?) production from photosynthesis. If they stayed on they would fry themselves, so they shut down by degrees. Whether that's a global optimization or a local one I couldn't say. But if the leaf is the bottleneck, then plants could in fact be photosynthesizing faster. At least during midday.
If someone could select or engineer more efficient pathways, then it could stay 'on' for longer. A chloroplast that produces less waste heat. A more efficient capillary system for bringing water and removing sugars. Maybe even something as simple as min-maxing soil moisture so the leaves have as much water as they could ever want.
Or, it could make a tree that cannot reach the canopy in an established forest, because it's overtrained for full sun.