Notes & Queries 21st September, 2013 - Longinquusphyta: A boring aquatic plant

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image generated by Grok


Skim an empty brandy glass (or any drinking vessel of your choosing) across the surface of a pond, or standing body of fresh water. Now raise it up to the light and examine its contents: You will hold in your hand a veritable cornucopia, teeming with microscopic aquatic life – a movable feast fit for a tiny king. Drifting without purpose across this thriving ecosystem will be millions of Longinquusphyta algal spores.

Longinquusphyta plays no role in the food chain in the sense that no other species goes out of its way to consume it (because of its small size it is commonly eaten by accident, despite the absence of any tangible nutritional value). It does not contribute or impact upon its environment in any meaningful way. It has no known antibiotic properties and is one of a rare class of living things that pharmaceutical companies regard as being completely and utterly useless to man.

“If all the Longinquusphyta died tomorrow, the world would be neither a better, nor a worse, place,” says Margaret Penstone of Duxelab Antiviral.

Scientists studying Longinquusphyta during the 1990s concluded that the algae had ceased to evolve several hundred million years ago and has existed ever since in a state of banal inertia, having reached a deeply unsatisfying compromise with its environment.

“I would go so far to describe Longinquusphyta as boring,” is the frank assessment of Professor Christopher Wilcox. It is worth noting that Professor Wilcox is something of an expert on boredom, having spent 32 years of his life harvesting pebbles from Brighton beach and then examining them, one by one, under a microscope often for up to an hour a time. After putting up with this for seven years, his family quietly abandoned him and emigrated to Australia, leaving no forwarding address.

The barely-living embodiment of tedium that is Longinquusphyta is probably best summed up in a paper written by Helen Segal – a lecturer in plant biology:

“As biologists we occasionally encounter living things that are so boring they become strangely fascinating to us, however this has not been the case with Longinquusphyta.”

I hope this is of help.

 

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