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The Conversation

Sunflowers make small moves to maximize their Sun exposure − physicists can model them to predict how they grow

The Conversation
Summary
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86% Informative

Charles Darwin's fascination with plant movements led him to be fascinated by the little-noticed world of plant movements.

The swoops of cucumber tendrils and zags of carnation leaves are examples of inherent, ubiquitous plant movements called circumnutations.

In a study, researchers found that sunflowers grown in a dense row naturally formed a near-perfect zigzag pattern.

Chantal Nguyen: Scientists and farmers can use plants’ movement to their advantage.

Nguyen: We modeled each plant as a circular crown on a stem, with the crown expanding according to the growth rate we measured experimentally.

The simulated plant moved in a completely random way, taking a “step” every half hour .

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92

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6

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informal

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English

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long-living

External references

18

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