In the Lord of the Rings fandom there’s a persistent debate whether balrogs, or Durin’s Bane specifically, have wings. The text in Fellowship is ambiguous whether what it is describing are literal wings or something else wing-like.
In the Lord of the Rings fandom there’s a persistent debate whether balrogs, or Durin’s Bane specifically, have wings. The text in Fellowship is ambiguous whether what it is describing are literal wings or something else wing-like.
alot of plants phylogeny is like this, they looked similar enough they are the same species, after doing enough testing, mostly mitochondria, choloroplast they actually are combined into one genus or move into another one. my favorite is mycoheterotrophs(plants that are entirely dependant fungi rather than photosynthesis), thismiaciae was originally though to have evolved in burmannia family,and then thier own family and then back again. finally in the 2020s they realized even thismiacae is polyphyletic. so now south americans thismia’s are likely belonged to another genus entirely(they havnt done significant phylogenetic studies in the SA ones)(seperate from the ones in south east asia, australia, and 1 extinct one in usa which makes it very unusual for it to appear in america), thismiacae is now a full family, and afrothismia was originally included in thismia, until they genetic testing, its entirely “new family” interdependently evolved but related to the ancestors of thismia. trying to trace lineage of mycoheterotrophic plants is difficult because they lose thier cholorplast genes quite easily.