alt Hacker NewsShould the wood of trees be counted? Its effectively dead cells of the plant, it'd be like counting the skin that we shed and sweep off the floor every weekend.
The trees are cheating
Replies
nkrisc • yesterday at 9:59 PM
It serves an important structural purpose for them. Similar to corals.
sophacles • yesterday at 10:02 PM
A lot of the wood is used for transporting water - vital to keeping the trees alive high up in the branches. And it is structural - so should we subtract 70% of the bone weight from a mammal since it is non-living structural support?
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If the dead cells were shed, I might agree! But they're not.
This is like counting the dead skin cells that are still attached, which (sure enough!) does count toward animal biomass.