Cancer is sustained abnormal growth, the loss of tightly regulated mechanisms to control cell division and growth.
Every species of multicellular organism gets #cancer.
Sharks.
Naked mole rats.
Lobsters.
even trees.
Let's talk about tree cancer.
When a tree is injured, infected, or stressed, the cells affected can undergo a loss of normal function and out of control growth. These outgrowths show poor cellular organization, producing odd wood-grain patterns and blobby outgrowths we call burls.
The similarities to mammalian cancer is obvious in a side-by-side comparison of tumor and burl.
The difference is that a neoplasm on a tree doesn't often kill the tree, because plant cells have rigid walls, and plants are less dependent on complex cellular organization.
In some cases, burls give rise to new trees budding from the mass of the old tree's trunk. Differentiated cells from the trunk act like tree embryos, producing clonal offspring sustained by metabolic machinery of the parent.
Burl poaching is a problem in old-growth forests.
Anyway, that's why, while your burl coffee table is very nice, I just don't like furniture made from tumors.
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