Internal clock helps young sunflowers follow the sun
Circadian strategy offers advantages, study finds
Young sunflowers grow better when they track the sun’s daily motion from east to west across the sky. An internal clock helps control the behavior, biologist Stacey Harmer and colleagues report in the Aug. 5 Science.
Depending on the time of day, certain growth genes appear to be activated to different degrees on opposing sides of young sunflowers’ stems. The east side of their stems grow faster during the day, causing the stems to gradually bend from east to west. The west side grows faster at night, reorienting the plants to prepare them for the next morning. “At dawn, they’re already facing east again,” says Harmer, of the University of California, Davis. The behavior helped sunflowers grow bigger, her team found.