this is a scientific depiction of a fern orgy. this is actually a very famous scientific depiction of a fern orgy. it’s describing the relationship between 3 (and eventually many more) different species of ferns in the Asplenium genus, called “the Asplenium triangle”, all of which live to a number of different degrees and areas in the Appalachian mountains. what it’s describing is what’s called the Appalachian spleenwort complex, or Asplenium hybrid complex. this was first developed in the 1970s and was a huge ass big deal in the fern community, and there’s been a ton of other fern complexes and triangles developed just like it.
to understand the Cursed Mountain Orgy Triangle, we need to throw out the assumption that species can’t fuck other species and have babies. that’s true for some organisms, but in the grand scheme of things it’s definitely not a hard rule; if something is closely related enough to another thing, it can fuck it and have babies. these babies, however, might be sterile (think about breeding a horse and a donkey to get a mule; mules are sterile and can’t have offspring).
so. let’s break this down.
okay. so. the edges of the triangle are Asplenium rhizophyllum, Asplenium platyneuron, and Asplenium montanum. these are three separate species that can fuck and make offspring, but the offspring is sterile. Asplenium rhizophyllum and Asplenium montanum are theorized to produce a sterile hybrid, but the offspring has never been formally collected. Asplenium montanum and Asplenium platyneuron can fuck, and the sterile hybrids have been collected before but don’t seem to be very common. Finally, Asplenium rhizophyllum and Asplenium platyneuron can fuck, which produces a very common sterile hybrid called Asplenium x ebenoides, or Scott’s spleenwort. and that was it and everyone was happy with their orgy choices and lived in the woods the end
….except its not the end. because ferns fuck a lot. and genetic mutations pop up. and sometimes, a mutation comes along and instead of producing a sterile hybrid, the genome of the offspring doubles and creates another, fertile mutant of the two parents. so the triangle actually looks like this:
the Asplenium rhizophyllum x platyneuron cross doubles to make Asplenium tutwilerae, the Asplenium rhizophyllum x montanum cross doubles to make Asplenium innatifidum, and the Asplenium montanum x platyneuron cross doubles to make Asplenium bradleyi. and THEN everyone was happy with their orgy choices and lived in the woods the end
just kidding, this isnt depicted on the original triangle diagram but we now know that bc the mutants are fertile they can go hog wild
im not going to write out all these hybrids. u can find them in chart form on the entire wikipedia article dedicated to asplenium crosses. also some of these plants can cross with other ferns outside the initial orgy zone and make new orgies. im not putting those in because i would die.
edit: it’s not a x2 genome mutation that makes the process of allotetraploidy, its a x4 mutation, which really doesnt make it much better