How do fields of grass just reach a certain length and stop growing? No one is mowing these wild fields.
In: 2
All plants have a cycle where they grow, develop leaves and roots in order to collect carbon dioxide + water and rearrange those atoms into sugar (and oxygen) through photosynthesis, and chain the sugars together to form cellulose which forms the body of the plant.
But the “point” of all this is to develop flowers and then fruits and then seeds. The plant has the capability to regulate itself and respond to the environment (temperature, levels of rain, etc.), and basically “stop” once the end goal of “seeds” has been accomplished.
Corn is a grass where we allow the full cycle, because we want the seeds. Corn grows to a certain height, makes seeds, then the plant dries up / dies off. Lawn grass, on the other hand, we mow every so often, “resetting” its cycle; the plant keeps trying to produce flowers and fruit and seeds but we just cut it up and reset it back to just leaves. So it keeps trying, because DNA basically tells it to.
So basically the answer is that growing to a point and then stopping is the “natural” “behavior”, and the mowing is the artificial behavior where the grass is forced to grow and grow and grow “all over again”.
Latest Answers