Animals need sleep in order to regain the energy they have lost during their period of activity. If they didn’t, it wouldn’t take long for them to be weak and / or sick. But, What about plant beings? Do they also rest?
Wondering if plants sleep is fascinating, since the answer you will get will help you better understand these wonderful and always surprising living beings.
Plants do not have a central nervous system like we do, but they do have a circadian rhythm appropriate to the 24-hour day-night cycle. This cycle helps them to know when to start performing their duties and when to suspend them.
As we know, they depend on the sun to grow, even begonias or ferns, which prefer to be protected from the star king, they couldn’t survive if they had no lightsince they could not perform the photosynthesis and, therefore, they could not feed. But of course, when it gets dark the opportunity to perform this important process disappears, so their behavior changes.
Albizia julibrissin with the folded leaves at sunset, from my collection.
Some, like Albizia julibrissin that you can see in the image above, they fold their leaves due to the lack of light. This curious reaction is known as present daywhich is nothing more than a reversible response to light stimuli. They are believed to do this to avoid losing heat when radiation decreases, which is amazing.
Nictinastic species have the pulvulus at the base of their leaves, which is a circular and flexible structure. It has extensor cells that are responsible for the opening of the leaves and flexor cells that are responsible for foliar closure. The two types of cells increase in size with increasing turgor every morning at sunrise, and every evening respectively.
Therefore, plants do not sleep, but if they were exposed to sunlight 24 hours a day they would have problems. Why? Because it is at night when they grow up. As they grow, they not only increase in size, but in doing so they become stronger and stronger, which is vital to be able to resist pests, diseases and the environmental conditions that are in place.
Did you find it interesting?
