Ecological Benefits to Plants
By: Andrew Schiffman
How plants benefit ecology is a huge category and would take a great amount of time to cover. So for this literature review, i will be specifically focusing on how different non living ecological factors can affect plants, from factors for example light, temperature.
Lights Influence on Plants
The most obvious environmental factor that greatly affects plant growth is light. Because without light, plants would not grow at all. Light has three principal characteristics that affect plant growth: quantity, quality, and duration. (University of Arizona). Quantity of course refers to how much light is reaching the plant or how intense the light is. The more intense the light is, the more food it is able to produce for itself to grow during photosynthesis which of course is the system of which plants grow. Quality of the light is determined by the wavelength of the light reaching the plant, the different colors of wavelength are the colors of the spectrum. Now the blue and the red lights have been shown to make the biggest impact on plant growth, blue light is responsible for leaf and vegetable growth and red light is responsible for flower production and growth. The duration of the light can basically explain for itself, but what many people don't realize is that the duration of dark periods actually has a bigger impact on plant growth than the period or light. |
How Temperature Affects Plants
Now temperature effects the plant depending on if the plant is a winter or summer seasonal plant. Say a cold season plant like broccoli is attempting to grow on a long warm day than the flower produced wont be near as much as it would if it was a cooler short winter day. Likewise, if temperatures are too cool during the warm season, then fruits will not ripen. “High temperatures cause increased respiration sometimes above the rate of photosynthesis. This means that the products of photosynthesis are being used more rapidly than they are being produced. For growth to occur photosynthesis must be greater than respiration.” (University of Arizona ). Which basically means that even though there may be a perfect amount of sunlight to conduct photosynthesis, if it is too hot than the respiration of the plant may prevent substantial growth in the plant. |
Works cited
"AZ Master Gardener Manual: Environmental Factors." AZ Master Gardener Manual: Environmental Factors. University of Arizona, 1998. Web. 05 June 2015.