Where do plants get energy from?

Detailed view of the leaves or fronds of a fern

Detailed view of the leaves or fronds of a fern

When we grow plants sometimes we find ourselves in the situation that they are weak, lack of energy. But what does this really mean? These beings to stay alive do something that no animal is capable of: transform sunlight into foodonly with water and air; However, when they are bad, their vital functions slow down, and as a result, their appearance becomes sad.

To know how important it is to water and fertilize them, it is interesting to ask where do plants get energy from. And that is precisely what we are going to talk about in this article, so that when you finish reading it you will know more about how amazing plants are.

Energy, one word, but what a word. In the same way that humans without energy cannot do anything, when plants lack it they also stagnate, weaken, and last but not least they become vulnerable to insects that can become pests and microorganisms (viruses , fungi and bacteria) that cause infections.

We often don’t think about this; Not surprisingly, plant beings live on a time scale very different from ours. In fact, while people in a single minute can travel an average of 89 meters, the sensitive mimosaFor example, it takes 8-10 minutes to open your folded sheets.

Without energy you could almost say that there is no life, that’s why we are going to explain …:

How do plants eat?

Plants perform different functions

Plants perform different functions

Plants need to feed, every day. There will be some months in which the amount of food that their roots absorb will be less, such as when the temperatures are too low or too high to be able to grow at a good rate, but there will be no day when they do not feed. Your root system will extend as long as it takes to find water, which will be carried down the stem to the leaves.

The leaves are the plants’ food factories. During the day, absorb solar energy and carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air that they will later transform into food in a process known as photosynthesis.

What are the vital functions of plants?

Plants must perform a series of functions in order to exist and be what they are. Although they do it silently and, from our point of view as humans, slowly, their survival mechanism is perfect. Proof of this is that the Plant Kingdom began its evolution more than 1500 million years ago, in the form of algae; and the first ‘modern’ plants, the gymnosperms, about 325 million years ago. The angiosperms, that is, the flowering plants, are even more recent: they appeared 130 million years ago.

What about humans? Well, the first hominids only 4 million years ago; which would be the equivalent of a blink if we compare it with the time that the plants take. But let’s not deviate.

Let’s see what are the vital functions how well they do:

Breathing

Yes, yes, plants also breathe, 24 hours a day. In fact, if they didn’t, they couldn’t be alive. They do it the same way we do: absorbing oxygen and expelling carbon dioxide. Thus, all the cells of the body are oxygenated, allowing them to carry out their functions. Interesting, right?

Food

Water is vital, but without ‘food’ they could not live long. The roots -when they have them, as there are certain plants called parasites that do not produce them- that what they do is absorb the nutrients that they find in the land where they grow.

When the soil is poor, the plant, over the centuries and millennia, evolves until it finds some mechanism that allows it to exist. This is what the carnivorous for example: living in lands where the water carries all the nutrients with it, they developed increasingly sophisticated traps to catch small insects, on which they feed.

Grow towards the sun

Leaves and flower buds of the Plumeria or Frangipani

Leaves and flower buds of the Plumeria or Frangipani

All plants need light to grow; some need it directly, and others instead in a filtered way through the branches of the trees. But, How do you know that you have to grow up and the roots down? Well, the response to this stimulus is known as phototropism.: in the first case it would be positive phototropism, and in the case of roots it is negative.

Light causes a hormonal reaction caused by auxin, which is concentrated in the region opposite to the incidence of light when the phototropic response is negative, or on the contrary in the region where the incidence of light is direct when the response phototropic is positive.

We hope that this article has been of interest to you to know more about plants and their world. Knowing them can help, and a lot, to take better care of them .

Where do plants get energy from?

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