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How Does Epinasty (the Epinastic Effect) Help a Plant During Flooding?
Epinasty is the one of the effects caused by flooding the roots of
plants with water. It is produced by the hormone Ethylene. What it looks like is the leaves are wilting just as if the plant had not enough water. What has been shown though is that Ethylene causes the upper part of the leaf stem to grow or grow faster than the bottom, thus the leaf droops down in a purposeful way. The reason for this effect has puzzled scientists. Suggestion: Epinasty during flooding is adaptive because the downward directed leaves act as sails in the wind, and the wind action on the leaf acts on the plant and leaf stems like somebody working a lever water pump. That is there is a physical mechanism within the stem similar to a lever water pump which is activated by the up and down movements of Epinastic leaves blown in the wind. There should then be structure analogous to those in a lever pump, for example pistons, diaphragms, valves etc. I don't know how these pumps really work. The idea is that a flooded plant needs to pump water out of space surrounding the roots as quickly as possible. Epinasty then does this through ramped up transpiration induced by a higher water pressure from a lever pump action. (Maybe downward directed leaves transpire more quickly in the wind even without pump action because when they become perpendicular to it or when the plant makes sure to epinastically grow perpendicular to the most common prevailing wind - this makes transpiration faster than if the leaves are parallel to the wind as the are on the most part during normal conditions.) Since I believe these is nothing new under the sun, I'm sure this idea has been around before. |
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