These unusual and beautiful trees were once exported from New Caledonia (an archipelago in the southwestern part of the Pacific Ocean) and, thanks to their decorativeness, spread throughout the world. As it turned out, they have one very strange property that people did not pay attention to before.
Today Cook pines, named after their discoverer, grow on five continents. However, wherever this tree is, it invariably grows at a certain slope. Least of all this slope is in the pines, which grow in their homeland - in New Caledonia. It is really so small that no one noticed it until the Cook pines spread across our planet.
Cook Pine Weirdness Discovered by Matt Ritter
The first to notice this striking feature was the American botanist Matt Ritter (California Polytechnic State University). It happened like this. Ritter called his Australian colleague to share a curious observation: Cook pines are all tilted towards the south. How surprised he was when he heard in response that in Australia these trees are always curved to the north!..
Intrigued scientists have joined forces to investigate this mysterious property of Cook pine trees. They have traveled five continents, visited all climatic zones on them. The more scientists saw, the more they were amazed. It turned out that the slope of the trees depends not only on the hemisphere in which the pines grew, but also on the climatic zone.
In the Southern Hemisphere, they leaned to the north, in the Northern - to the south, and in the equator they grew almost straight. What makes trees grow at an angle? 256 Cook pines were examined, which were suitable for the purity of the experiment, namely, there were no extraneous factors that could affect the growth of trees, for example, damage or crowding.
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It turned out that the tilt angle directly depends on how far the pines are from the equator. On average, it is 8 ° 55 '. Researchers have put forward several versions that can explain this phenomenon.
Do the Cook Pines sense the Earth's geomagnetic field?
According to the first theory, the unnatural tilt of the tree is the result of a mutation in the developmental mechanism of the trunk. However, this hypothesis does not explain why the slope depends on the hemisphere as well as the climatic zone.
Second version. Some plants are known to be able to turn towards the sun, such as a sunflower, or to be constantly pointed towards the south in order to receive more light. An example is the short-leaved yucca. Is it possible that Cook's pine has some similar mechanism? But then what is the purpose of tilting her trunk?
And the last hypothesis, according to which the Cook pines sense the geomagnetic lines of the planet and their intensity. The direction and force of inclination of the trunks, taking into account the vector of gravity, depend on these factors. This theory seems to be the most probable and at the same time the most difficult to prove. As is known, such mechanisms, sensitive to geomagnetic lines, have been found only in migratory birds, as well as in some species of fish and mammals. The presence of this mechanism in plants would radically change the concept of the hypersensitivity of living organisms.
But even if we accept this theory, the question remains: why do trees reach the equator? Is this how they strive for their "historical homeland"? Is this possible, and if so, how can the Cook pine trees realize their "secret desires"?..
There are many questions, there are no answers yet …