Now I wonder if any botany experiments have been conducted to
see how much biovolume goes on underground versus the vegetation
above ground biovolume.

I remember some scientist a long time ago remark that if we lived
underground, that the root system of plants would occupy about the
same volume as the vegetative growth above ground.

Now I am skeptical of that assessment. Perhaps some grass roots
are more extensive underground than their vegetative biovolume
above ground, but I do not believe that tree roots are equivalent
biovolume below ground as above ground.

I suppose an experiment can be set up and conducted where a
scoop schovel lifts dirt and roots and all where they are sorted out
and tabulated.

But maybe there is a method that is not destructive of any plants.
Maybe there is a method that we can get an accurate estimate
of the root volume.

I suppose on tomatoes hydroponically grown we can directly
measure if the root volume approaches that of the vegetative
volume.

There was a recent NOVA program on fractals as appearing
in the branching of trees. So I suspect that fractals probably are
appearing in the root volume versus the above ground vegetative
volume. It seems reasonable to me that the energy of a plant
is from the Sun so the larger volume would be the vegetative
volume. But then some plants invest alot of their energy in
underground root structure as a form of reproduction rather
than above ground in seed production.

So has there been any botany experiments of a math relationship
of underground biovolume versus above ground biovolume of plants?

Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies