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Re: Aquatic Plants Digest V3 #1282
At 11:03 PM 9/16/99 -0400, Kenneth Bruno wrote:
> As far as plant evolution goes, some interesting things are being
>learned through genome sequencing. For example, grasses such as maize and
>sorghum have the same genome organization. The genes that code for
>compnents of photosystem 1 are in relatively the same place in the genome
>in each organism. However, maize has a great deal more intergenic DNA.
> I sometimes wonder if aquatic plants are more closely related to
>land plants than to all other aquatics.
I'm not sure what you mean by "other aquatics". If you mean algae, even
macro algae, you are correct. Most aquatic plants _are_ much more closely
related to land plants. In fact, most aquatic plants have developed from
land plants that have adapted to life in the water again. That's why
there's any sense to allelopathy. In the typical water environment, (other
than the aquarium) there is just no sense trying to chemically damage your
neighbor... these substances just get washed away. OTOH, if you are a land
plant competing for much more limited resources, if you can keep your
neighbors away, you get first dibs at water, nutrients, etc.
In fact, most of the genera containing species that we use in the aquarium
also contain species that are _not_ aquatic at all.
Karen