Episode 2: Bombing in our steppe. Plants await bad weather and what comes of it.
In winter, our endless steppe turns into a white, lifeless desert, covered in a dense, frozen layer of snow—a crust. It seems that during this harsh time of year, all plants have either dried out or are in a deep dormancy. However, it is precisely during this period that many plants initiate a unique mechanism that scientists jokingly call "winter skiing."
The Aleboo team will tell you how nature ingeniously helps steppe grass seeds travel hundreds of kilometers and spread to new territories.
Competition: Who's Taller? Why are the seeds of cereal plants located at the very top of their long stems, while the stems containing cereals are always taller than the dense grass?
Evolution has worked hard to solve this problem, and here's the result.
The tall, sturdy stems of steppe grasses such as feather grass, couch grass, and fescue, as well as their faithful companion, wormwood, perform a vital function in winter: they act as natural "flagpoles." In the steppe, the snow level rises with each snowstorm. If the inflorescences of these plants were low to the ground, they would be instantly buried by the first precipitation. In that case, the seeds would remain buried under the snow until spring and likely be eaten by rodents. But their strong stems hold the spikelets, panicles, and heads high above the surface of the snow crust, even in the harshest snowstorms.
However, wind power alone is often insufficient for seed dispersal. Nature has devised a far more sophisticated mechanism. When a steppe snowstorm begins, the squall carries not only fluffy snow but also hard, high-speed ice crystals across the frozen crust.
Billions of ice "projectiles" strike the dry inflorescences of grasses and wormwood at high speed. Physicists call this process cryoabrasion (ice beating), but for plants, it's the ultimate thresher. The continuous bombardment literally knocks and threshes the ripe grains from their fragile spikelets. And then, strong gusts of wind pick up the freed seeds and carry them across the glass-smooth crust for vast distances, helping the plants conquer new steppe expanses.
When the wind dies down, a surprising sight emerges: perfectly "cleaned" stems stand in the steppe. Nature has accomplished all the work of plant dispersal perfectly.
In the next article: The winter steppe ecosystem is a single, perfectly tuned mechanism. Where ice bombardment triggers a chain reaction that leads to the shoulders of high-speed country roads. Here we'll reveal the secret of roadside flocks: why birds occupy country roads and the price they pay for it.
Stay with the Aleboo team. Even on these gloomy autumn days, it'll be wildly interesting with us.
