Re: plants without lights

["S. Lardizabal" <samalaud at yahoo_com>]

Bill wrote...
"I wonder if the plants during their forced rest
managed to store up nutrients for that time when
conditions might improve, and when they did, just 
exploded before things got bad again?"

Seems fairly reasonable to me!  Most plant life goes
through a dormant phase, ie. wintering over.  We keep
our plants in an artificial environment where the
growing conditions are always optimal, so the plants
constantly grow.  But, if you significantly change the
environment to trick the plant into believing that
"winter" has come, or a non-growing environment, it
will put all its efforts into keeping what tissue it
has.  Anything leftover will likely be stored somehow.
 And when the growing environment returns, new plants
are likely to follow.  

Take Echinodorus species for example, a significant
change in the photoperiod over a tank can cause them
to put out runners, ie. baby plants.  

IMHO our tanks will never approximate "real"
conditions if they remain static.. I know of no
environment on earth that is in a static existence.  

>Sarah

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