I guess what I’m asking is does this process even create much? Plants just lay roots and stare at the sun; if they had a means to get up and move – how far could they get?
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Photosynthesis is responsible for virtually all the energy in an ecosystem, because at the bottom of the nearly every food chain, its plants. Every animal you see owes its ability to live and move to energy created by plants.
Although it works, Photosynthesis in plants isn’t actually all the efficient. Only about 1-5% of the incoming sunlight that hits them is actually able to be utilized, which is partially because sunlight is so incredibly diverse in its wavelengths, so plants picked a small part of the spectrum and focused on that.
In regards to plants being able to move, its not so much the roots that hinder them, its that because photosynthesis doesn’t provide them enough energy to actually move around much. Basic movements we already see in some plants like the snapping of the Venus Fly Trap, the curling leaves of the Cape Sundew, or the rapid closing of the Mimosa’s leaves, those use a lot of the plant’s available energy reserves.
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