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
I feel like a lot of people are misunderstanding your question and focusing on the plant being physically too heavy (with fruit/flowers etc). Unless ***I’m*** misunderstanding I think you mean is it possible to harm a plant by giving it more nutrients than it requires for survival. The answer is yes! Over feeding a plant makes it look superficially healthy, bigger, bushier etc but the plant will be weaker and harder to keep alive. The pots of herbs you buy in supermarkets are blasted with fertiliser to make them look bigger (and often it’s not one plant but 4-5 crammed together in too small a space). As you might have experienced yourself, those supermarket herbs die pretty quickly, even in the hands of people who know about plants. Sorry to go off on a supermarket herb tangent but you can keep them alive by unpotting them, carefully separating out the plants from each other and putting them in their own pots with good quality soil. And laying off the plant food. Hope I’ve answered your question!
Yes, absolutely. Fruit trees need to be regularly thinned, so instead of more of smaller fruits, they produce fewer, bigger fruits. Also, if you don’t do this they can end up producing only every other year.
If you mean in terms of weight and weighing down the whole plant, I’d say that issue comes up much more with fruiting vegetables like tomatoes, pepper, and eggplants. I’ve never seen those vegetables not needing to be supported by posts
Former commercial horticulturalist here. While my input might not be as sound as a biologist, from real world experience we basically supercharge the plants to the peak of what nutrients they are able to receive just below the threshold of toxicity. If they receive over the threshold they’ll begin to die, in specific ways depending on the nutrient. This allows the plants to bear (things) at their maximum weight, to the point that they need to be tied or else they’ll snap.
My experience in aquaculture is pretty much the same, but obviously the plants don’t gain weight, they basically suffocate if they become too dense because co2 can’t properly circulate.
“Feeding” plants too often with fertilizer can cause what’s known as “nutrient burn.” The plant’s body can’t use all the nutrients that it’s absorbing and the chemical overload can cause it to lose leaves, have stunted growth, wilt, or even die.
EDIT: Some helpful people have pointed out that this actually doesn’t have anything to do with the plants processing nutrients, but rather that many of the nutrients in fertilizer are chemicals and salts that affect the roots’ ability to absorb water, and this is what causes the affected plants to appear “burnt”. It’s less like diabetes and more like choking on your food.
Plants can get “fat” if you are wondering, look at potatoes and ginger, or any other tuber, they do that to store nutrients and energy for the future, so in a sense yeah, plants do get overwheighted, you just need to find a big potato
Plants can get overloaded with fruits. In a year with plenty of water and sunshine, they can produce so many fruits that weigh itself down, which end up bending or snapping their branches.
Other plants can grow too big for their environments. A side branch growing towards sunshine may overextend and can break when stressed in wind or when covered with snow.
I bought my house four years ago, and we watered a half cut down little tree in my backyard, not knowing it was a peach tree. Winter, and spring passed, that first summer, it produced maybe 30/40ish peaches. A buddy of mine gave me advice and said “Put a piece of ribbon tape on every little branch shoot that doesn’t produce peaches. When winter hits and the nutrients go back in the ground, slice those branches off.”
Sounded easy peasey, so I did it. Next year, I had over 100 peaches. Rinse and repeat for several more years.
Last summer, I produced so many peaches half of my tree snapped in half. I plan on adding supports to my wild branches this year so it doesn’t happen again… I love peaches!
It depends, some plants can store excess energy as humans store fat (tubers, bulbs, rhyzomes). If a plant can do that, they will (potato plants will make more and bigger potatoes, plants, like onions and liliums, who have bulbs will make their bulbs bigger). Plants which don’t have those organs will do different things. Take for example, trees: most trees will choose to make and grow more stem and leaves instead of flowers (which causes problems), some plants, for example, can store excess nutrients on themselves (which is a grave problem in things that we eat) without any noticeable changes in size. This is called “luxury consumption” and it’s a problem. This is overly simplified because it’s eli5 but you can ask if you want clarifications on any item.
Source: I’m an agronomer and my life is plants and plants accesories.
Not the same I guess but there’s a herbicide that kills the plants by causing it to grow so quickly it will kill itself because it can not possibly get enough water to keep up with the demand that the growing puts on it so they will dehydrate.
It probably depends on the plant.
Some can store starch that can be used later, a bit like adipose tissue in mammals. Things like potatoes will store it in their tubers.
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