Plantlet The Blogging Platform of Department of Botany, University of Dhaka
Unlike other living beings plants are immobile. They have to live at the mercy of nature. If the place they are standing on has a scarcity of water or minerals, they can’t move to a better place. If a tornado or cyclone arrives they can’t escape from it and take shelter somewhere safe. Again, if something blocks their sunlight they can’t say “Hey, you’re in my way”. So, they figured out a clever way to grow up to the sunlight without having to displace its root. That’s why we see plants bending or growing towards sunlight. But all the colors present in the sunlight don’t induce growth in them. Only the one color of light does. And in 1887, Julius Von Sachs proved that.
Julius Von Sachs
Julius Von Sachs was born on 2nd October 1832 in Germany. He has been described as a post-Darwinian botanist. He was the first to examine whether phototropism could be stimulated by particular colors of light.
Experiments of Julius Sachs
Using both colored glass and solutions to illuminate plants with different wavelengths of light, Sachs found that blue light was the most effective.
