The Fern That Cooled the Planet

Over its lifetime, the Earth has seen plenty of climate change. About 50 million years ago the planet experienced extreme cooling, and all from a little fern.

Hosted by: Hank Green
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[Suntoria]

I couldn't help but kept thinking about Azula from Avatar: The Last Airbender whenever Hank says Azolla...

[curaxu]

heres my question: why arent we churning out azola like madmen?!

[SiskinOnUTube]

I have some in my aquarium. It helps to cut the amount of toxic nitrates that would harm the fish. I pull out handfuls of the stuff every week or so. It's great shelter for baby fish too and keeps everybody calm in there. It's not so good if it ends up in wild places where it doesn't belong. It is such a strong grower, that it smothers native plant species and clogs up waterways.

[DynamixWarePro]

I never knew that about this fern! There is a lake a few miles from where I live that is full of Azolla filiculoides and its an invasive weed here since it isn't native and was out competing native water plants and a few times people tried to remove all the Azolla, but they always missed a few and it kept regrowing and taking over most of the lake. I think now its illegal to sell it here or have it as a garden pond plant because if it escapes into waterways, it can easily grow everywhere.

[EugeneKhutoryansky]

So perhaps this plant will help us counteract global warming, and we won't have an apocalypse after all.

[eclipseslayer]

Saltwater Azula. A Salt water Azula would heat up the planet so fast with those firebending moves.... that I wouldn't remember what this episode is about. What?

[michaelfurgessons]

Make Earth great again! Vote for Fern!

[beatrizantillon]

Azola is just one of the various easy growing and pretty advantageous floating macrophytes out there. Like Spirodela polyrhiza, proven to be able to degrade aromatic compounds and metals to some extent. Plus, having azola in your pond is like adding sparkles

[ellieban]

Water moss also has fascinating leaves with amazingly complex hairs that make it incredible at repelling water. Scientists are researching the effect of those hairs to see whether we can copy them to make new materials with novel properties. It really is a remarkable plant!

[Vicioussama]

Funny how people think that a species can't change the environment/climate. They can do it quite well as we've learned from the fossil record. And people think we humans can't do the same? Oye.

[arthdh]

We all know that acorns caused the ice age :3

[TwistedRiddles]

Well, that's definitely the coolest fern I've ever heard of. ~.^

[davefoc]

I liked this story. Azolla occasionally grows in my my little garden pond and it grows faster than just about anything I've ever seen and then it dies for some reason I've never understood. It seems like conditions that favor duck weed are not good for azolla and visa versa because either one plant or the other seems to quickly overtake the pond and the other plant dies off. One usage not mentioned in the video is in rice paddies. It helps prevent weeds by blocking light and when it dies it provides a source of nitrogen for the rice.

[aboot]

This is awesome! I love videos like these on your channel!

[tchphrak]

Do an episode on the recently observed quantum state of matter

[dotdenier]

Anyone with a fish tank can grow some Azolla if they want. I find it makes the aquarium smell less stale and it acts as a fast-growing food source for them

[priestboy]

lets hope that fern can be of use now, too~

[chrismitchell]

sign me up sir! where can we find this earth saving fern?

[poeticjustice]

You should do a new episode on this, they just finished sequencing the entire genome!

[stellarfirefly]

Azolla cooling doesn't seem like the silver bullet that people apparently hope it would be (in comments). While any additional photosynthetic plant mass will always be helpful, it took a continent-sized mass many millions of years to do what it did in the past. Meanwhile, we humans are greenhousing the planet in only decades.