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Plants can grow quickly or accurately, but not both

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Re: Plants can grow quickly or accurately, but not both

#25
post #5

> How are plants, with no advanced nervous system, able to gather information about their environment to guide their behavior, planning and flexibly executing movement? Sound, maybe. Or chemoreception. Possibly even eye-like structures. 'eye-like structures'?! https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tplants.2016.07.008 : Although plants are sessile organisms, almost all of their organs move in space and thus require plant-specific…

Plant physiology is a branch of biology that studies this, and have developed clear and reasonable explanations. Some that don't involve having parts of animals scattered in plants.

Re: Plants can grow quickly or accurately, but not both

#26
post #5

> How are plants, with no advanced nervous system, able to gather information about their environment to guide their behavior, planning and flexibly executing movement? Sound, maybe. Or chemoreception. Possibly even eye-like structures. 'eye-like structures'?! https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tplants.2016.07.008 : Although plants are sessile organisms, almost all of their organs move in space and thus require plant-specific…

Considering that they photosynthesize, photosensitivity doesn't seem like that much of a leap.

If you have photosynthesis, you already have photosensitivity. The process of photosynthesis will cause chemical gradients in the reaction's inputs and outputs (and those of secondary reactions) that indicate where the plant senses light.

Exactly how those are leveraged, I don't know, but based on hanging out with folks who study this for a few years, I'm going to bet it's very complicated and somehow involves auxin.

An overview of some plant growth influences and auxin: https://www.biologyonline.com/tutorials/plant-auxins-phototr...

Re: Plants can grow quickly or accurately, but not both

#28
"Generally, our actions are subject to a speed-accuracy trade-off: the faster you do something, the less accurate you tend to be"

And interesting edge-case where that isn't true are professional athletes.

Maybe in the plant world the equivalent would be kudzu [0]. It has the speed thing down without issue, and as for accuracy... well, you grow like it does, you're hitting every target. It's about as close to a sci-fi gray goo scenario as we get, or the monster movie "The Blob", and one of the the prescribed methods of dealing with it is actually "kill it with fire!"

[0] https://www.appalachiabare.com/when-stephen-king-turned-into...

Re: Plants can grow quickly or accurately, but not both

#29
post #5

> How are plants, with no advanced nervous system, able to gather information about their environment to guide their behavior, planning and flexibly executing movement? Sound, maybe. Or chemoreception. Possibly even eye-like structures. 'eye-like structures'?! https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tplants.2016.07.008 : Although plants are sessile organisms, almost all of their organs move in space and thus require plant-specific…

Should I make the "potatoes have eyes" comment? Hmm, guess I just did.

Re: Plants can grow quickly or accurately, but not both

#30

"Generally, our actions are subject to a speed-accuracy trade-off: the faster you do something, the less accurate you tend to be" And interesting edge-case where that isn't true are professional athletes. Maybe in the plant world the equivalent would be kudzu [0]. It has the speed thing down without issue, and as for accuracy... well, you grow like it does, you're hitting every target. It's about as close to a sci-fi…

I don't know if athletes fit. They spend their whole day in training to stay accurate.

And thanks for the cool kudzu article!

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