A gardener I know reckons that rain falling during a thunderstorm will
carry an electrical charge that's especially beneficial to the plants it
falls on, even waking them from a kind of dormancy.

Sounds like rubbish to me but I'm no scientist. Are there any facts for or
against the notion?

Roger

It's not the electricity that makes plants so green after a good
thunderstorm. The lightning ionizes nitrogen into a form that is very
readily taken up by plants once it's washed into the soil.

M. REed


Roger Whitehead wrote:
A gardener I know reckons that rain falling during a thunderstorm will
carry an electrical charge that's especially beneficial to the plants it
falls on, even waking them from a kind of dormancy.

Sounds like rubbish to me but I'm no scientist. Are there any facts for or
against the notion?

Roger

In article ,
Roger Whitehead wrote:
A gardener I know reckons that rain falling during a thunderstorm will
carry an electrical charge that's especially beneficial to the plants it
falls on, even waking them from a kind of dormancy.

Sounds like rubbish to me but I'm no scientist. Are there any facts for or
against the notion?

I'm not a scientist either, and it sounds like rubbish to me, too, FWIW.

However, it may be a garbled remnant of the true situation -- lightning
discharges produce nitrogen oxides which are a significant natural
source of nitrates when they are washed out of the atmosphere by rain.
I've seen calculations of the annual amounts for agricultural areas and
they are not insignificant -- i.e. not enough for corn, but plenty for
forest and grassland. It's one of the ways the nitrogen cycle is closed.

In article , wrote:
However, it may be a garbled remnant of the true situation...

Thanks for that explanation.

Roger

In article , Monique wrote:
It's not the electricity that makes plants so green after a good
thunderstorm. The lightning ionizes nitrogen into a form that is very
readily taken up by plants once it's washed into the soil.

Thanks, Monique.

Nice to hear from you again. 8-)

Roger