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Old 14-05-2007, 11:45 PM posted to sci.bio.botany
[email protected] bae@cs.toronto.no-uce.edu is offline
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Jul 2006
Posts: 47
Default Do some plants grow only at night?

In article ,
Buddy why.wood.yew@bother wrote:
I came across the following quote, and many plants are
nocturnal, plants of the nightshade family; tomatoes, potatoes,
peppers, eggplant, etc. only grow at night... they store up energy
during daylight but don't actually grow until it's dark.


Is this true? Can anyone site a source for this information?


I suspect this is somebody's folk etymology for the term "nightshade".

I know most plants consume CO2 in the day and O2 at night, but the above
statement seems counter intuitive.


Actually, they consume O2 all the time, but with light, they can
photosynthesize, consuming CO2 and producing sugars and oxygen.
As to actual growth, i.e. producing more and larger cells, they
do that all the time, as long as they have enough light, water,
heat, nutrients, etc, except when dormant, of course.