Surviving the Great Dying

There is evidence that we're living through a mass extinction event, and I'm not referring to the pandemic. In general, we're losing dozens of species every year, and that's likely conservative in the estimate.

Anyway, the end of the Permian period, there was one of the greatest mass extinctions ever. So many species died off that the event is known as the Great Dying today. It happened around 252 million years ago, at the line between the historical eras of the Permian and the Jurassic. Enough land animals disappeared that the dinosaurs came into their own, and the rest we (as in the masses) kinda know about.

But, besides the animals that survived, some plants also survived. Here are two from my walk to the grocers:

In the background is a fern tree, an ancient pre-flowering plant, nearly half-a-billion years old. Next to it, in the foreground, is a cycad, a fibrous, palm-looking plant that isn't closely related to palms at all. Having developed over 300 million years ago, cycads survived the Great Dying, survived the dinosaurs, and survived the end of the dinosaurs.

And that's just out on the walk to the grocery store.

Also in the neighborhood is another survivor of the Great Dying:

Ginkgo biloba is a broad green leafed tree that isn't an angiosperm---it doesn't flower. It's sometimes known as a "shit-berry" tree, since the fruits of it smell like poop, or vomit. I usually smell barf, and the idea is that they spread all over the planet because the fruits smelled like carrion. Today ginkgo can be found all over the globe. They're hearty, strong, and, above all else, are survivors.

Another plant that's in our neighborhood is a magnolia. I've taken many pictures of them over the years, but I just learned something about them. They are angiosperms, and we know that they flower from any number of popular cultural references.

BUT, the magnolia is one of the oldest remaining angiosperms. Like, ancient. But, once you think about it, it makes a certain sense.

Check it out: the leaves are extremely tough and covered in wax. The flowers are large, and the core of the flower grows after the petals go away. It grows and grows, and eventually looks like pine cone. It even behaves as a pine cone eventually, as it matures and the red seeds finally avail themselves to the tree rodents in the neighborhood.

Not a survivor of the Great Dying, but pretty cool nonetheless.