Posted on 05/19/2016 9:31:20 AM PDT by Carriage Hill
They don’t snore, but might creak during their slumbers. For the first time, trees have been shown to undergo physical changes at night that can be likened to sleep, or at least to day-night cycles that have been observed experimentally in smaller plants. Branches of birch trees have now been seen drooping by as much as 10 centimetres at the tips towards the end of the night. “It was a very clear effect, and applied to the whole tree,” says András Zlinszky of the Centre for Ecological Research in Tihany, Hungary. “No one has observed this effect before at the scale of whole trees, and I was surprised by the extent of the changes.”
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
Branches of birch trees have now been seen drooping by as much as 10 centimetres at the tips towards the end of the night.
“It was a very clear effect, and applied to the whole tree,” says András Zlinszky of the Centre for Ecological Research in Tihany, Hungary. “No one has observed this effect before at the scale of whole trees, and I was surprised by the extent of the changes.”
Zlinszky and his colleagues scanned trees in Austria and Finland with laser beams between sunset and sunrise. From the time it takes beams to bounce back from branches and leaves, they could measure the movements of each tree, in three dimensions and at resolutions of centimetres.
Sleep like a log?
Isn’t this just the opposite way of saying that plants turn toward sunlight during the day?
Interesting. I am very glad that I can’t hear their screams when I cut them down with a chainsaw.
Are they claiming that the tree relaxes it’s muscles during sleep? Because I think I see a problem ...
sawing zzz’s.....
CC
+1.
Lazy ass trees. Get a job. Oh, they have one. Making O2 out of ‘See Uh OH 2’. Keep up the good work.
My flowering trees are in full bloom in the morning, and the blooms close up in the late evening. Trees do react to the times of day.
I remember reading fifty five years ago that plants have “feelings”, in controlled tests with electronic monitoring equipment.
"The Secret Life of Plants." Fascinating book.
Country folk have seen Morning Glories and Sun Flowers for quite some time.
And the trees are glad you can’t hear them give birds the idea to sit in their branches and aim for you.
Do you think the leaves just might weigh more at night because they collect dew on their surface? Obviously, the extra weight of all the leaf’s moisture would make the branch sag. But then I’m not a scientist, so what do I know?
“Isn’t this just the opposite way of saying that plants turn toward sunlight during the day?”
That’s really what this is about despite the anthropomorphic babble.
I’ve got a Geranium right now with it’s leaves plastered up against the sliding glass door. Heading out to finally plant them today.
I wonder if these scientists considered this might just be the effect sunlight / heat has on lumber. Heat a board to bend it by shrinking the cells in the wood.
They could have figured this out by simply getting out of the city for a while and observing what every country person sees all the time. But I suppose there’s no research grants for that.
At night, no draw, pressure goes down, causes moderate deflation of the cells, they droop some.
< my story and I am sticking to it! >
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