Theoretically if you gave a plant all of the nutrients that it needs to grow could it continue to grow forever or would it stop eventually?
Would it eventually just die regardless of the nutrients that you are pumping in to it? Do plants age like humans?
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No.
Plant height is controlled by genetics, just like animal height. If you put more nutrients in, you’re likely to see more plants, not larger plants.
Plants don’t age exactly, but they do have size limits.
Picture a tree. A tree needs a certain amount of water (and micronutrients) from the earth to maintain itself. As it gets bigger and taller, the amount of sustenance it needs increases, but the reach of its roots and the water available in the soil doesn’t necessarily increase in line with that. As the tree gets taller, it will eventually hit a point where there isn’t enough water available in the soil for it to stay hydrated, and it will begin to die.
Most trees (and other plants) are genetically predisposed to stop growing larger – or at least slow down – past a certain point. This point often lines up with the point where growing much larger would normally be unsustainable from a resources point of view… even if you’re actually supplying it with everything it needs.
Bear in mind, though – for big woody plants like trees, it can take hundreds of years to reach their maximum size. Soft-stemmed plants tend to get there faster.
The idea of “aging” is a very animalistic concept, and doesn’t apply perfectly to plants. Animals regenerate our cells constantly, replacing old ones with flawed new ones – this is what causes aging.
Plants don’t do this, at least, not in the same way. If a leaf gets damaged, the tree has no way to regenerate the specific cells that make up that specific leaf. The leaf will just die and fall off. The plant will likely grow a new leaf in its place.
Theoretically, most plants are immortal. Provided they get enough nutrients and aren’t severely damaged, they’ll just go on existing. Many plants don’t really *want* to be immortal, though – many are “intentionally” short lived as part of that particular plant’s life cycle.
Plant size is controlled by their genetics, though with many creeping or trailing plants, while they may have limited height or thickness, they may spread outward continuously.
Plants have varying age limits, much like animals. Some live for only a year or two at most and will eventually die even if you try to keep it alive, and then their are plants that have been alive for longer than we have had writing and metal tools, with no apparent end to their growth. In some cases, this is tied to the plant’s reproductive cycles, where blooming and going to seed trigger the end of growth on part of the plant or all of the plant, and the beginning of a decline. Agaves are a famous example, living for decades in some cases and then producing a massive towering flower stalk once before dying. Bamboo is another, with entire forests going to seed all at once and then dying.
What’s even more odd is in many cases cut portions of plants, if they are able to root and regrow(not all can) and were not cut from a blooming/seeding portion of the plant, seemingly have their biological clock reset. A similar case comes up with plants that produce pups or runners, where in many cases(but not all) the new offset is a clone of the parent from the same cells, yet their age is seemingly reset. Two personal examples i know of, Coleus, and Sempervivums. Coleus is a short lived plant(around three years or so in warm climates or indoors) known for a huge variety of different mutations that give it very colorful leaves, but very few of these mutations will appear in its seeds, as a result many coleus cultivars have been kept going for generations through continuous stem cuttings. Sempervivums on the other hand are alpine succulents that grow as a central rosette of leaves, but also send out aboveground runners that produce a new baby rosette away from the parent that can grow its own roots and will be self sufficient even if disconnected. Each rosette only blooms once and then dies, but the children of the parent rosette outlive its death, regardless of whether they are still attached by that runner or have become seperated.
It works the same way as with humans. You can feed a 50 year old human all you want, but they aren’t going to keep growing (otherwise, the NBA will mostly be senior citizens). Likewise, plants will stop growing after a certain time, but more nutrients will just cause more plants
I work in a marijuana cultivation site and we have “mother” plants that we use to take clones and they do eventually age out and get too old to be viable. It’s always a little sad when we gotta cull one
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