Adult Phyllanthus ‘yet to wake up’
2019-06-13T18:30:00Z
Sophia CUBE Kishore Bharati Locality Lab
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Niice. Why has this plant specifically been chosen for the study?
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It closes its leaves in.evening and opens it in morning.
How does this happen and why? Can be studied inorder to understand this plant movement.
Looks like there is role of light in this biological rhythm in Phyllanthus
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What time do they close with respect to sunset? (Am thinking whether it is about light or temperature drop)
What sort of experiments are you doing with it?
Whether the closing is a result of stopping photosynthesis for the day (and thus losing some byproduct that keeps leaves erect)
(if it is waking up late, light may not be the trigger. The photo is quite bright, it should have been open to business, so to say. But the cloudy weather has cool mornings.)
May be interesting to shade and darken it earlier. If it is triggered by light, the leaves will close. If the plant has some internal clock, they will close at the right time regardless. If it is temperature related, they will close later.
Also may be interesting to log peak temperature of the day and temperature at the time the leaves close.
It is common for plants to droop a little at night. So whether this is related or a separate process.
I mentioned the temperature thing because many plants I grow have metabolisms that require night time temperature drops or they start floundering over time.
Nepenthes villosa for example will need days that can go up to 30C, but nights MUST be between 5C and 10C or over time, it will start declining. Heliamphora species (and a lot of highland species) do fine with a 5C-10C drop - whether from 30C to 20C or 20 to 15.
So clearly there are plants with temperature based metabolic stuff going on, just like light.
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Another interesting experiment to do would be to grow it under 24 hour lights. What does the plant do then?
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The plant looks like to close its leaves near to 6pm in this season
The experiments which you suggested are most important to find out is it light or temperature or both affecting this cycle.
One can also compare Phyllanthus from different seasons, with difference in day and night length and see is the leaf closing and opening time changes with change in day-night length.
If it is kept at home or lab one can do experiments with controlled conditions.
What physiological changes come about by closing the leaves of plant is one such question very important to know. And what is its significance.
Phyllanthus is found abundantly almost near to everyone, therefore it could be a potential plant model…
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You guys are probably doing it, but it may be a good idea to create a log or graph.
For temps, best would be: Night time lowest temperature, temperature at opening, daytime highest, temperature at closing.
For time: Time of all of the above. Add sunrise/sunset time to it (this you can get online)
For light, if you have a meter: Intensity of light when leaves open, close.
If you have a way to automate this, may be interesting to record day long pattern of temperature/light. If you can plonk it next to one of your weather stations, you’ll probably be able to get the light-temperature graphs with relatively trivial automation. All that remains is to record the opening and closing. A CCTV feed that several experimenters can keep an eye on could help (in case one person can’t be relied on to note timings regularly)
Put all those numbers on a graph on tracing paper, stack up the graphs, and something should coincide too much to be a coincidence.
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Adult Phyllanthus ‘yet to wake up’
June 14, 2019
But, no time given in this! Must be sometime in the morning, right?