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Friday cepahopod blogging—Ontario tree octopus

It isn’t often that I see one of these in my backyard. Part alien, part Dalek, but all cephalopod!

This one came down from her tree for a little frolic in the snow.

Then she retreated to safety.

CAM plants

I was browsing through John Kimball’s online biology text when I noticed the entry about C4 plants. Creationists might tell you that there is nothing new under the sun or that mutation can’t produce improvements; but since I studied biology, new kinds of photosynthesis have been noted.

Most plants capture energy from the sun by a process that uses a molecule with three carbon atoms; they are C3 plants. But in 18 different families of plants, there’s a more efficient method that uses a molecule with four carbon atoms. They are familiarly called C4 plants. And there’s yet another group, mostly cacti and succulents, that use both C3 and C4 methods, but at different times. They are the CAM plants. (“CAM” stands for crassulacean acid metabolism.) Coincidentally, my stepdaughter did her master’s thesis on the effect of carbon dioxide levels on photosynthesis in CAM plants.

To learn more than you guessed there was to know about photorespiration in C4 plants, follow the link.