Zee Media Bureau
New York: In an interesting find, scientists have revealed that sunflowers do not simply respond to sunlight, but also to an internal biological clock.
The study differed the common preception that sun is the only factor that drives the plants` movement as it tilt back and forth each day as the sun rises and sets.
It says that in addition to the sun, sunflowers have their own internal clock that drives them into this movement.
The study also said that sunflowers bend when one side of the stem grows faster than the other.
To come to this conclusion, plant biologists Hagop Atamian and Stacey Harmer of the University of California at Davis in the US grew sunflowers in a field and then transferred them to growth chambers with a fixed overhead light that was always on.
Accordint to the journal Nature, the plants continued their daily journey from east to west and back for several days after the transfer, suggesting that they were not responding only to the direction of the light, but their own timekeeper.
The research has been presented this week at the annual meeting of the American Society of Plant Biologists in Portland, US.
(With Agency Inputs)
