Amazing Plant Abilities

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

As the history of the development of life on our planet shows, man should not boast of his role as a "supreme being". Observant people discover in plants such abilities that man considers his privileges. However, research by scientists demonstrates the presence of many "human" abilities in plants that have populated the earth's expanses much earlier than humans

Self-learning Mimosa is bashful

As scientists from distant Australia have found out, Mimosa, bashful not for any touch, folds its leaves, although the mechanism of protective action is such that it should act automatically on any touch.

Indeed, the protective action is based on a purely mechanical scheme - the ability of the sensory areas located on the leaves, upon external touch to the surface of the leaves due to a change in pressure, instantly give the command to the moisture located in the water membranes at the base of each short petiole to rush to the place of touch, thus making the leaves heavier. Such a sharp change in the mass of the leaves makes them roll up and go down mournfully.

Scientists' studies have shown that the mechanism does not work automatically, but selectively. If some previous contact did not lead to negative consequences for the life of the plant, then this will remain in the plant's "memory". With a second such touch, the plant will no longer waste its energy on activating the protective mechanism.

So, the opinion that plants remember good or bad treatment of them is not a romantic invention of housewives, but is noticed by many people who love the plant world, who are able to observe and think.

Venus flytrap is a good bookkeeper

Observational biologists day by day discover more and more secret abilities of the plant world. For example, it turns out that the Creator of life on Earth was the first to teach counting not people, but plants. This fact has been studied by German scientists using the example of the behavior of a marsh plant, the Venus flytrap.

Since the swampy soil does not contain the amount of the chemical element, nitrogen, necessary for plant life, plants have to use different tricks in order to provide themselves with the necessary element of the periodic table.

If the plants of the legume family, which grow, though not in a swamp, but on poor soils, entered into a friendly agreement with soil bacteria, leasing the surface of their roots in exchange for nitrogen fixed by the bacteria, then the Venus flytrap went the other way.

The plant has turned into a predator, managing, without leaving the place, to take over the flying fast-winged insects. To do this, the Venus flytrap resorted to several tricks:

* She gave her leaves the shape of a folding shell, consisting of two valves.

* For the color of the upper surface of the valves, the plant chose a pale green color, and the inner bed was lined with bright soft fibers.

* And the plant also learned to count in order to spend its energy rationally, without wasting it on a "false guest", for example, a speck of dust or a grain of sand that accidentally flew into a cozy trap.

It is the ability to count that allows the Venus flytrap to distinguish an insect from a grain of sand. The grain of sand will touch the villi, and it will settle motionlessly to the bottom. And the insect, turning over with its nimble paws, will touch them once, two, three, four - here the mechanism of the leaf will work, taking prisoner a creature that is much more agile and more mobile than itself.

The fifth touch enables the plant to absorb nutrients from the captive. And each subsequent movement of the victim determines the amount of enzymes produced by the plant necessary for digestion.

Summary

Reading about such discoveries, you look back at your life and understand that a person's upbringing has many flaws. How many people spend their vitality on "grains of sand" that accidentally flew into their fate, which are not at all worth their attention.

We must learn to live with plants, the experience of which is much richer and longer, and not turn our nose up above the heavens:).