re: #47 Diamond Bullet

Maybe this is too obvious, but does being in a cold, dry incubator for 7 years affect plant growth?

Given the fact that, say, expert cherry tree watchers in D.C. still mostly guesstimate as to when a given tree will flower from year to year and whether it will “peak” with its fellows, I’m not sure we can assume that different flowering times in different samples automatically means “climate change induced evolution.” Now if one batch of mustard plants is throwing little spears at the other one, you might be on to something.

Down in my area if you want a bumper crop of Texas bluebonnets in the spring you have to take the seeds, put them in your freezer for a week, then get the out and whack them with a hammer. For some reason this causes them to sprout better. In the real world, bluebonnet seeds sit dormant in the soil for years until a particular seed has had enough cycles to rough up the shell so it feels like sprouting. So you might be right, there needs to be control that proves that the cold storage of the cold storage of the seeds doesn’t actually help them.