Flowers are here on earth because they are very useful for modifying animal behavior. Plants lead sedentary lives without ever getting a chance to have a few too many drinks at the disco and subsequently mixing up their gene pool by breeding with strangers. Wind pollination served the conifers well, but getting an animal to do the work of moving your pollen around was the greatest single advance in plant breeding. Flowering plants are the most recently evolved major form of life we see around us and they haven't stopped at getting insects to do their dirty work.
In the Leutratal valley just south of Jena, beautiful flowers have harnessed the help of an industrial strength mammal, Man.
One of Hitler's Autobahns, the A4, crosses the Saale river at the southern tip of town and winds up the Leutratal valley, sandwiched between the little village of Leutra and the orchids of Thuringia's first botanical reserve. Most of the highway is 6 lanes, but in this valley of sacred cows it narrows to only 4 lanes. There is no room to widen the road without destroying much of the old village or tearing into the orchid meadows, and the villagers and orchid seekers don't like the noise and fumes that come with a major highway. So, even though the end of the age of automobiles is almost in sight, in classic German style, a solution was found in engineering. At the cost of 240 million euros a 3Km tunnel is being bored through the mountain, to bring calm to the valley and two extra lanes for the sake of speeding across Europe without having to slow down to 90 miles/hr through a pretty little valley. The flowers don't get torn up and will have a nice quite pastoral setting for their breeding. So, did the humans save the flowers or did the pretty little flowers manipulate us? It is impossible to discern, but one thing is certain, being pretty has served them well.
I'm not making this up. Here is the wiki. Men made huge machines from mined iron ore, transported them here and have been working for years to punch through the rock. Completion isn't expected until 2012. The resulting tunnel will need massive ventilation fans and lighting that will run constantly. I like the orchids as much as anyone, but this all seems more than a bit silly to me.
In the Leutratal valley just south of Jena, beautiful flowers have harnessed the help of an industrial strength mammal, Man.
One of Hitler's Autobahns, the A4, crosses the Saale river at the southern tip of town and winds up the Leutratal valley, sandwiched between the little village of Leutra and the orchids of Thuringia's first botanical reserve. Most of the highway is 6 lanes, but in this valley of sacred cows it narrows to only 4 lanes. There is no room to widen the road without destroying much of the old village or tearing into the orchid meadows, and the villagers and orchid seekers don't like the noise and fumes that come with a major highway. So, even though the end of the age of automobiles is almost in sight, in classic German style, a solution was found in engineering. At the cost of 240 million euros a 3Km tunnel is being bored through the mountain, to bring calm to the valley and two extra lanes for the sake of speeding across Europe without having to slow down to 90 miles/hr through a pretty little valley. The flowers don't get torn up and will have a nice quite pastoral setting for their breeding. So, did the humans save the flowers or did the pretty little flowers manipulate us? It is impossible to discern, but one thing is certain, being pretty has served them well.
I'm not making this up. Here is the wiki. Men made huge machines from mined iron ore, transported them here and have been working for years to punch through the rock. Completion isn't expected until 2012. The resulting tunnel will need massive ventilation fans and lighting that will run constantly. I like the orchids as much as anyone, but this all seems more than a bit silly to me.
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