It’s easy conceptually to understand when animals eat physical food matter, it adds to their own body mass as they grow.
But potted plants grow 2x, 3x, etc their mass while the only (seemingly) inputs are Sun, water and occasional plant food. The soil level doesn’t seem to change much either, so where is the “material” coming from to make the plant bigger? Is it just from what I mentioned, and is there an easy way to understand how those things transforms to plant mass?
Edit: Thanks for all the answers! It unexpectedly helped me understand how plants capture carbon from the air and “store” it physically. I have a new appreciation for my houseplants 🪴
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Lots of great explanations here. I’d like to point out that anyone that takes basic biology or life science in school learns about photosynthesis, and how plants convert CO2 into oxygen, etc. but the focus is/was always on the oxygen part of the cycle.
Its been almost 40 years since I first learned about that and I only came to understand the carbon part of that cycle in the past 5 years. I was literally shocked to learn that most of the mass of a tree comes from the air. I was taught “plants grow by getting energy from sunlight through photosynthesis, and drawing nutrients and water from the ground.” which totally failed to mention carbon capture. I never connected that if they are releasing oxygen, the carbon must be kept in the plant.
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