Possible Signs of Flora on the Planet Venus
Experiments in television photography instrumented by the landers VENERA-13 and VENERA-14 (March, 1 and 5, 1982) yielded 37 panoramas (or their fragments) of the Venus surface at the landing sites. The archival panoramas were reexamined using modern processing techniques and revealed ‘stem’ objects possessing apparent terramorphic features of Earth-like plants. This paper is devoted to hypothetical venusian flora only. ‘Plants’ or ‘Stems’ are thin knotty vertical trunks that have a thickness of 0.3-3 cm and are 0.2 to 0.5 m tall. On close objects, one can see that the ‘stem’ at the top end is provided with a large bulge, a ‘burgeon’ or ‘flower’, with ‘petals’ surrounding a bright center.
