Why carrots braid themselves

[Rusty_Blazenhoff]

Originally published at: Why carrots braid themselves | Boing Boing

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[fuzzyfungus]

I’m not the motivated hydroponicist to do it; but I’d be very interested to see what happens if a carrot were raised in a mazelike environment of glass tubes, to provide lots of growth obstacles and high visibility. Intricate pipework full of conformal tuber?

[Otherbrother]

@Rusty_Blazenhoff

Closely spaced carrots will sometimes twist around each other, as you’ve found, as they apparently find it easier to grow downward through soil in a group effort.

Or maybe it’s because they’re just looking for love?

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Woman loses engagement ring, finds it 13 years later wrapped around a carrot...

[theophrastus]

Do they typically tend to twist to the right (“right handed carrots”); as the couple cases depicted? There are right-handed ivy twisting tendencies and left-handed species. Then there’s the bark on trees. Helices helices everywhere!

@Otherbrother Yeah, left-twisters have a lot more trouble finding a compatible mate.

man, oh man, ain’t that the truth!? (wait… that was a reference to human (snails), wasn’t it?)

[Otherbrother]

@theophrastus

Do they typically tend to twist to the right (“right handed carrots”); as the couple cases depicted?

Yeah, left-twisters have a lot more trouble finding a compatible mate. (I assume that carrots mate the same way as snails, right?)

Jeremy, The Lonely, Left-Twisting Snail, Dies — But Knows Love Before The End

[Yri]

@Rusty_Blazenhoff

Closely spaced carrots will sometimes twist around each other, as you’ve found, as they apparently find it easier to grow downward through soil in a group effort.

There is power in the (carrot) Union!

[ClutchLinkey]

@Rusty_Blazenhoff

they apparently find it easier to grow downward through soil in a group effort.

[anon33932455]

Makes sense! I guess if you want to grow braided carrots, make sure to space them too close together and add some stones (?).

Somewhere an enterprising Fine Arts student is now busy preparing some rocky soil just so, in order to get ready for the eventual gallery show of “Twisted Roots” that depicts hir feelings family and heritage.

[CoffeeStar]

I remember deliberately mixing small stones into the soil as a kid with a hope to get fun looking carrots.

[FGD135]

[generic_name]

Please tell me it’s “love.”

[ValiantAP6]

My partner had a right handed heart in a left handed body (internally). This was her second heart, the first was left handed.

She was tall and beautiful and the next heart had to be a right handed mans heart because size and availability matters with transplants.

Carrots twist together in both directions because of love.

[LutherBlisset]

So, that’s a bit clearer now, but how do carrots sense the obstacles?

Or, to ask the fundamental question, how do they sense down and up?

A friend of mine has his whole career bas s on this question, and he is literally shooting plants to space for it.