How do plants know when it’s Autumn? How do leaves know when to turn red and fall off?
In: Biology
Its the same reason you react when you smell something rotten, somewhere inside your dna you notice something different or wrong and you react accordingly
Plants are the same way, but their version of rotten food in this case is changing of the season, where they will be getting MUCH less energy from the sun and cant spend the energy it takes to support leaf growth, so the leaves slowly die. They know to do this based on how much sun they are getting, but more specifically how much LESS sun they are getting. Eventually, the amount of energy the sun is giving them becomes less than the amount of energy they are spending on leaves and they stop
This is a very simplified version, but hope it at least gives an idea
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