"How plants communicate"

romano

Active Member
When i get around to giving a dose of cal mag for the first time on a young plant ,shortly later its odor goes up. So I assume the lack of it may lower odors ???
 

jberry

Well-Known Member
nah, thats not how it works.... the chemical odors that plants let off to warn each other of danger is different from the odors that the terpenes let off.

some nutes (like cal/mag and many others) will increase oil production and cause certain terpenes to be more intense and plentyful........ newer research is showing that this is the reason organic food/flowers can be tastier and smell stronger.
 

dirrtyd

Well-Known Member
Will have to try with some seeds outside this year and see i could use a male in a controlled environment. Good Read Thanks
 

jberry

Well-Known Member
i took 100 cuttings from the same mom and put them under T5 lights for 18/6... and after about 3+ weeks of vegging them, 3 of the cuttings just started flowering like crazy. They arent showing any signs of stress and i know it isnt a light leak, they arent rootbound, i didnt give them any flowering food or hormones and all the other plants are normal.

its no big deal, but i brought it up since this is kinda of a good place to talk about the strange things that plants do, and im just curious if anyone knows what would cause such a thing or if this has happened to anyone else?
 

ganjaluvr

Well-Known Member
I've actually personally done an experiment with plants and sound (vibrations).

There were only subtle differences in the plant that was exposed to sounds... (Music..T.V.)

But once I sat there and thought about another way to test this theory.. I thought about the different tones and frequencies that certain vibrations (high/medium/low) give off.. (as with anything that makes noise.. that noise emits a pulse of vibration waves or pulses that fly through the air.. which is why we hear all kinds of different sounds through out the day)

So, I called my brother (he's a genius pretty much) and asked him if he could figure out how to make a noise box.. where I could control the pitch and tone of the vibrations that the noise is emitting... in order to be able to test different tones and pulses and see which one works the best for the plant.

Still working on the noise/vibration box so as soon as we're done with that.. I'll let you guys know how everything goes.
 

jberry

Well-Known Member
have you checked into Sonic Bloom? the man who invented it claims he spent 5 years perfecting the correct frequency for plants, and another 15 years working on the correct ratio of foliar nutrients to apply while the music vibrates the stomata open on the leaves.

you could buy the audio cd on their website for like 15 bucks if you trust his research...
 

jberry

Well-Known Member
Warming will disrupt the release of chemicals that plants use to communicate:

A warming climate could lead to a more fragrant world, but it might disturb an intricate communication system used by plants, according to a review published recently in Trends in Plant Science.
When Jarmo Holopainen grew white cabbages in a greenhouse in Finland, he found that over many years of sunlight and elevated levels of carbon dioxide, the plants' communication with the world was altered.
Cabbages and most vegetation emit chemicals called biogenic volatile organic compounds, or BVOCs, that are mostly undetectable by humans. But they notify other organisms of danger and opportunity, and also function as methods of plant-plant communication. When we can smell them, they manifest as fragrances.


"Plants emit more volatile compounds than expected earlier, with high temperature," said Holopainen, a professor of environmental science at the University of Kuopio in Finland.

Over the past 30 years, higher temperatures have increased emissions of the compounds by 10 percent, according to the review. And an increase in temperature of 2 to 3 degrees Celsius could lead to a further 30 to 45 percent increase.
Studies with a heath plant native to the sub-Arctic showed that a 3- to 4-degree temperature rise would increase emissions between 56 and 83 percent, according to the review.

"Plants emit more of the message, but also change the wording of the message," said Josep Penuelas, lead author of the report and director at the Global Ecology Unit at Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona in Spain. "Pollinators and predators could be confused."

BVOCs are extremely volatile, and at higher temperatures, the plants not only synthesize more of them, but the chemicals also vaporize easily. There are many different types of volatile compounds with exotic names such as isoprenes, monoterpenes, green leaf volatiles, herbivore-induced volatiles, and others. They have different origins and functions, and serve essential roles in plant growth, defense and reproduction.

Self-protection and reproduction through scents
Some plant species, for instance, protect themselves from predators by emitting volatile compounds when their leaves get damaged. These scents attract the predators of herbivores to the scene.

"It is a form of intelligent self-protection," said Penuelas.
Other scents can attract pollinators such as bees to help with reproduction.
But the effects of altered communication signals are not straightforward, and more research is necessary, said Penuelas. It could also affect the timing of lifecycle events, or phenology, he said.


"We know that biological spring is advancing now," he said. "If the odors arise earlier and insects are not there, there could be a mismatch in biological processes."
Holopainen found that with his cabbages, higher levels of carbon dioxide could weaken the signals given out by the plants to specific predators when an insect herbivore fed on its leaves. Other predators were unaffected. The work was published in the journal Plant Physiology.
This could be because an excess of emissions creates enough background noise to mask the signal for certain predators, said Holopainen.

BVOCs have also been shown to have a cooling effect on plants. They get degraded to aerosols that can cool plants down, serving a function similar to respiration.

"More emissions will protect plants better against a warmer world," Penuelas said.
At the same time, BVOCs are also sources of ozone, a greenhouse gas that favors warming. What the net effect of the altered chemistry of the atmosphere would be is unknown, Penuelas said. :leaf:
 

jberry

Well-Known Member
How do you overcome a strong enemy? Find an even stronger one of his.
At least that's what wild tobacco plants do when attacked by insects, according to a new study published in today's Science.


Plants
are constantly struggling to ward off a variety of predators, ranging from caterpillars to cows. To defend themselves, many have developed poisons and thorns, which tend to be very effective for a while. With time, however, predators tend to find ways around such defenses, or they simply become immune to them.
Taking a closer look at the wild tobacco plant (which grows in the Southwestern United States), a team of scientists from the Max-Planck-Institute in Jena, Germany have found that it resorts to a very different, less direct defense: when an herbivore predator such as the hawkmoth larva (see image) attacks a wild tobacco plant, the plant releases a volatile chemical compound (VOC) into the environment. These compounds signal to other predatory insects that there is a quick meal to be had. Indeed, the VOC leads them straight to their prey.
Corn uses the same mechanism to attract parasitoids, including parasitic wasps that kill worms attacking corn plants by laying their eggs inside them.
Andre Kessler and Ian Baldwin, the researchers conducting the study, actually found that the VOCs go one step farther in protecting plants. When VOCs are emitted, the five-spotted hawkmoth is not only less likely to lay its eggs on tobacco plants, but predators are actually more likely to find and eat those eggs.
Although these mechanisms were detected earlier in a laboratory setting, the findings had remained controversial�and some scientists doubted that they could be observed in a complex natural ecosystem. This is the first research to document VOC-based indirect defenses in the wild.
 

ecofrog

Member
In botany school, we did lots of probing of 'communication'. I can remember rigging up with electrodes all thruout the plant. When ripping a leaf on one side, all thruout the plant, including roots and flower petals saw a surge in electrochemi potential. We could also manipulate the various off gassing response of certain compounds such as Isoprene and CO2 with rate change in about 30seconds.

It wasnt as fast as our nervous system but i think the analogy holds.

jberry just mentioned VOC's and Isoprene is a major one that plants release as well as easily tested by plant scientists. It was one that my particular lab specialized in so I guess I know a bit about it.
 

Tahmi.Guhnn

Active Member
This information is fucking amazing. pardon my french but it's givin me a mind orgasim, no joke i think my brain is tingling. i've downloaded all the vids and books that were mentiond but anywho i had a question. where do you guys look to to find information like this?
 

jberry

Well-Known Member
This information is fucking amazing. pardon my french but it's givin me a mind orgasim, no joke i think my brain is tingling. i've downloaded all the vids and books that were mentiond but anywho i had a question. where do you guys look to to find information like this?
I believe Scientific American Magazine is where i read the most recent info, but also from NASA research, Botany research articles & studies, University studies & research data bases.
 
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