Eli5 can plants just grow forever?

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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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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.

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