When animals eat too much food, they gain weight. What happens to a plant that produces too much food via photosynthesis? Can plants be overweight?
In: Biology
No. But they can experience intumescence, where they have absorbed so much water that their tissues engorge and get covered in these little bumps.
EDIT: I was thinking about tree bark. But yes, as others have pointed out, it can also result in ruptures.
The only weight stress that occurs to plants from weight is on the branches holding them. Plants don’t become overweight, but, their fruit can become oversized if it isn’t harvested as needed.
this is only semi-related to your question but that is one way herbicides work, by mimicking the chemicals that signal growth and basically causing a plant to starve itself trying to grow.
If you give cannabis plants too much nitrogen they’ll keep prioritizing leaf and branch production into the flowering phase at the cost of its own flowers/seeds. Im assuming this could happen to other plants too
Something I haven’t seen mentioned is a weed killer called [2,4-d](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic_acid). The process kills weeds by making them grow at an unsustainable rate. The plants grow until they die due to not having enough nutrients or energy. The process is very efficient and 2,4-d is one of the most popular lawn care chemicals for weeds.
It is also extremely controversial not only as a herbicide but because of its usage in the chemical weapon agent orange.
One of the saddest facts about cherrys is that they can absorb a hell of alot of water quickly so when they are about to be picked if it rains too much they will all split . Ruining them all
Cannabis is typically grown to be “overweight” on purpose, needing netting or a similar device to help hold up branches
Have you seen cacti? They are obviously bloated with sap for storage.
In a way yes. It’s common for marijuana to get too heavy for it’s stems and snap in the flowering stage, I imagine other plants can too. Although that’s not really the same thing as animals being overweight.
Not similar. Most plants don’t create storage for excess energy based on just nutrient consumption. They are efficient in that all nutrients taken up will be put toward growth or fruit. The exception would be biennials perrenials, though their energy storage mechanisms are usually subject to environmental cues rather than just nutrient uptake. Onions will bulb out based on the amount of daylight they receive, and will then use the bulb as an energy store over winter. Most of your flower bulbs behave similarly. Trees will create large stores of sugar as daylight hours shorten and the weather cools. This not only feeds the tree, but the sugar and some proteins act as a sort of antifreeze to keep its cells from rupturing due to ice formation.
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