Plants are great survivors. They have been evolving for more than 240 million years, and it is certain that they will continue to do so many, many more. Some of them are capable of surprising us, but there are others that seem to defy nature itself, such as hibakujumoku.
This buzzword probably won’t tell you anything. Not only is it in a foreign language but it is also one of the most difficult to learn (I tell you from experience). But it has an amazing meaning: is the Japanese term that refers to the trees that survived the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
Pulling from etymology, the term is made up of two Japanese words: hibaku, which means bombarded, and jumoku, which translates as trees. The damage that the Hiroshima bomb caused to animals (including people) and buildings was terrible: 166.000 people died in Hiroshima and another 80.000 in Nagasaki towards the end of ’45 as a consequence of the bombing and its effects.
The heat that the explosion emitted during the first three seconds at a distance of three kilometers from the hypocenter or ‘ground zero’ was about 40 times greater than that emitted by the Sun in one day. So much so that the initial radiation level at the hypocenter was approximately 240 Gy (Gray’s symbol, which means Gray in English). The plants were only damaged in the parts that were most exposed on the ground, incredible, right?
In 2011, 170 trees repopulated the area of the bombing. Species that had been there before, being the Nerium oleander (oleander) one of the most adaptable. In fact, this quality served to be designated as the official flower of Hiroshima. But … what are these surviving plants? Here’s a sample:
The survival instinct is very strong, but no one should put it to the test. We all deserve to lead a peaceful and happy life, whether we are four-legged or two-legged animals, or plants.
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