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
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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