Comment on Atmospheric Slapping Tournament

ToffeeIsForClosers@piefed.ca ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

• Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  It’s sort of how trees don’t have limbs lower than the height of a box truck along major roads.

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  • jol@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    So trees have evolved truck-sensing organs in the span of mere decades? Unbelievable!

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    • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I know you’re joking but it’s really survival of the fittest.

      Branches that are too low and get hit by trucks don’t grow very far into the road.

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• AmbitiousProcess@piefed.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Apparently that’s the leading theory, but another is just that for reasons I am absolutely unqualified to explain, they sense light in specific ways that causes them to grow differently once they get close enough to another tree blocking some of the light there.

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  • ToffeeIsForClosers@piefed.ca ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Like a houseplant angling toward the window light?

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    • Slatlun@lemmy.ml ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      A little, the stretching house plant demonstrates how plants can sense the direction light is coming from. They can also sense qualities of light. They can tell if light is filtered through other leaves, for instance. I would speculate that refected light also has a unique color (wavelength) distribution that a plant could sense and respond to

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      • Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        The reflected light of other leaves wouldn’t cause photosynthesis since it only has wavelengths that the chloroplasts reflect. They wouldn’t have any light to absorb, or at least a lot less.

        I imagine it’s like expecting regular soda and getting diet.

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      • AmbitiousProcess@piefed.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        I would speculate that [reflected] light also has a unique color (wavelength) distribution that a plant could sense and respond to

        It seems as far as we can tell, trees can detect “far red” spectrum light, suspected to be done via phytochromes, and that spectrum of light is in higher quantities when closer to other tree leaves because it gets reflected off.

        They detect that, and don’t grow as much in that direction since it would cause diminishing returns.

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