While at the grocery store, you stop in the florist section to look at some cut

Question

While at the grocery store, you stop in the florist section to look at some cut flowers, but end up buying two more potted house plants that are on sale. The plants look identical, and the tags indicate the plants arc the same variety. When you get home, you put one in the kitchen window and one by a lamp in your office. A week later, one is blooming, but the other one is not. Why? It is autumn, but plants, like tulip bulbs, that normally emerge in the spring are already coming up in your yard and your neighbor's yard as well. What factors have caused the plants' untimely emergence? Primroses are treasured by many gardeners for their hardiness and beautiful double petal whorls. However, occasionally flowers with one petal whorl instead of two can be observed on the same the plant. Please explain the mechanisms that could be involved.

Explanation / Answer

1. Plants absorb light at two wavelengths. These are- 430 nm, at the blue/violet end of visible light, and 662 nm at the far end of red liight of the spectrum. These are used for photosynthesis. Natural light has all these wavelengths of light. Artiicial or synthetic light do not contain all the wavelengths of light. Hence, growth of the potted plant that has been put on the kitchen window is more than the one placed by a lamp in the office.

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