Does the Moon Affect Plants? Part 3: Gravitational Effects?

Does the Moon’s Gravity Affect Trees?
To me this sounds like a silly question.
Why?
Because I’d no more expect the moon’s gravity to affect trees than it affects the water in a pond or swimming pool.
If the moon doesn’t elicit tidal effects in such small bodies of water, then why would it’s gravity affect trees?
But, largely due [...]

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Does the Moon Affect Plants? Part 2: Moonlight and Biorhythms

The Biology of Moonlight?
The moon may have effects on animal behavior (see here for example), but does it affect plants?
Last time I introduced the scientific literature on the subject by referring to a 1946 paper by Beeson (see ref. 1 below) published in the journal Nature. In this paper Dr. Beeson divided the information regarding [...]

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Does the Moon Affect Plants?

Walking on the Moon
On July 20, 1969 Apollo 11 crew members Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first humans to walk on the moon.
With the 40th anniversary of this first moon landing currently in news, I thought it would be interesting to investigate what’s known about the effects, if any, of the moon on [...]

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Bees and Flower “Velcro”

Getting a Grip
Ever wonder how a bee or a butterfly can land on a flower and not fall off?
Me neither.
But thanks to researchers in the UK, we now have another reason why flowers are so marvelous.
Flowering plants have evolved chemical signals to attract pollinators to their flowers. Such signals include volatile chemicals to produce attractive [...]

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Why Plants Tell Time

Last time we had a taste of HOW plants tell time.
But what, if any, are the adaptive advantages to plants for doing so?
It has long been presumed that the ability to anticipate day/night cycles gives organisms a fitness advantage. For example, this would allow plants to anticipate daylight and adjust their photosynthetic metabolism accordingly, [...]

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How Plants Tell Time

How Do We Know Plants Can Tell Time?
The daily opening and closing of flowers and the rhythmic leaf movement of some plants suggests, even to the casual observer, that plants have an internal clock.
To more careful observers, such as Carl Linnaeus and Charles Darwin, the evidence was clear that plants can tell time.
For example, in [...]

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How a Plant Growth Hormone Predicted by Darwin Shapes Plants

The Power of Movement in Plants
Most of a flowering plant’s development and physiology is regulated by plant hormones.
The first of these chemical signals to be isolated and characterized was auxin.
In the 1930’s, after the initial discovery of auxin by Frits Went in 1928, he, Kenneth Thimann, and Folke Skoog showed that, in addition [...]

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Will Frenzied Plant Growth Help Solve Global Warming?

Devil-may-care and out-of-control plants.
A couple of reports in the science news this week seem to suggest that one way to cope with global climate change may be unbridled plant growth.
One has to do with the discovery of a cellular regulator for the synthesis of cellulose by plant cells.
The other involves plants’ natural [...]

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How Stress Shapes Plants

To make complex organisms takes specialized cells.
Animals and flowering plants require specialized cells with distinct abilities in order to accomplish higher order functions – such as vision or flowering.
It’s somewhat like a symphony orchestra. The orchestra integrates different musicians playing different instruments. The characteristic sounds of the instruments can be blended together to achieve [...]

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