Researchers at Tel Aviv University say they have discovered that sunflowers growing together in dense environments move in a zigzag pattern as if they’re dancing, not only to get more sunlight but also to avoid blocking the sunlight of their neighbor.
The discovery sheds light on a scientific idea that Charles Darwin first explored 200 years ago when he observed that plants moved in circular movements, called circumnutations.
The study, led by Prof. Yasmine Meroz from Tel Aviv’s School of Plant Sciences and Food Security and Prof. Orit Peleg from the University of Colorado Boulder, along with other researchers, was published last week in the peer-reviewed journal Physical Review X. University. (Courtesy/Tel Aviv University)
Researchers at Tel Aviv University say they have discovered that sunflowers growing together in dense environments move in a zigzag pattern as if they’re dancing, not only to get more sunlight but also to avoid blocking the sunlight of their neighbor.
The discovery sheds light on a scientific idea that Charles Darwin first explored 200 years ago when he observed that plants moved in circular movements, called circumnutations.
The study, led by Prof. Yasmine Meroz from Tel Aviv’s School of Plant Sciences and Food Security and Prof. Orit Peleg from the University of Colorado Boulder, along with other researchers, was published last week in the peer-reviewed journal Physical Review X. In describing how sunflowers moved in their experiment, Meroz and Peleg told The Times of Israel by telephone to “imagine a party where it’s very, very crowded.” If nobody moves, said Meroz, “then you’re stuck in some places which are kind of empty, and other places, like next to the buffet, where it’s very, very crowded.” But if “you dance just the right amount,” she said, “then you will have enough space.” The experiment showed that sunflowers “seem to wiggle.” One flower will “go to the right, another to the left, in a zigzag pattern,” the researchers said, moving in circumnutations that seem to be coordinated so that a crowded group of plants can move about “collectively to find more light.” The researchers said their work was inspired by research done on sunflowers grown closely together in a field. The flowers perceive light signals from their immediate neighbors and change their positions for optimal growth of the crowded group. Meroz and Peleg grew five sunflowers close together in a row and followed their movements by taking a time-lapse photo every couple of minutes over a week to 10 days to make a movie where the sunflowers seemed to be wiggling in a zigzag pattern like in a dance. “We saw that the plants moved a lot — a lot more than we thought they would,” Meroz said. “The idea came to us that these circumnutations might have a function in helping these plants find “an optimal configuration, where all of them have enough sunlight,” Meroz said.
The study indicates that sunflowers wiggle not only to optimize their own access to sunlight, but they also do so in a way that optimizes the sunlight for their fellow sunflowers. This is a classic example of “win-win”. Just like sunflowers, we should never view life as “zero sum”. Our wins do not need to come about at the expense of someone else’s loss. In Ki Tavo the pasuk says הסכת ושמע. What does the word הסכת mean? The Gemara in Berachot 63b suggests that הסכת has the word כת in it, to teach us that Torah is optimally acquired in a group setting. Sunflowers are one of my favorite flowers, and we can learn important lessons from them. We should strive to be like the sunflower, seeking to maximize our own potential while seeking to lift up and optimize others at the same time.
No comments:
Post a Comment