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
Viticulturist here (grape grower). Allowing a vineyard to overcrop is one of the worst things you can do. It has a detrimental impact on fruit composition and fruit quality. On top of that, it interferes in plant physiology and the vine’s ability to store nutrients over the winter and “harden off” to protect against winter damage. What usually happens the following year is higher rates of winter kill and poor canopy growth in order for the plant to compensate for the previous year’s over-cropping. Even just one year of over-cropping can set a vineyard back and take several years of work to correct it.
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.
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.
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
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!
Cannabis is typically grown to be “overweight” on purpose, needing netting or a similar device to help hold up branches
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.
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