Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the Second Edition
- Preface to the First Edition
- Part I Plants and energy
- Part II Plant nutrition
- Part III Growth and development
- Part IV Stress, defense, and decline
- 12 Stressful tranquility
- 13 Chemical warfare
- 14 Senescence and death
- Part V Plants and the environment
- Appendix
- Epilogue
- Index
13 - Chemical warfare
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the Second Edition
- Preface to the First Edition
- Part I Plants and energy
- Part II Plant nutrition
- Part III Growth and development
- Part IV Stress, defense, and decline
- 12 Stressful tranquility
- 13 Chemical warfare
- 14 Senescence and death
- Part V Plants and the environment
- Appendix
- Epilogue
- Index
Summary
INTRODUCTION
Plants can be devasted by attacks from adversaries. Recall the near total damage to vegetation caused by plagues of locusts down the centuries or the wiping out of entire crops by disease as in the infamous example of the potato blight in Ireland in the mid-nineteenth century.
Yet, green plants still dominate the landscape in spite of their countless enemies; plants make up a major proportion of the world's biomass, the total weight of all living things. They have evolved an impressive array of strategies, physical and chemical, to defend themselves. Some plants even seem to use their weaponry to ward off competition from their own kind.
PLANT DEFENSES AGAINST PREDATORS
Indeterminate growth
Plants have an amazing ability to renew themselves even as they are being attacked. Grazing animals may spend major amounts of time cropping their preferred food sources, yet these same plants usually maintain healthy and vigorous growth as long as environmental conditions continue to be favorable. Disease may devastate a plant in the wild but rarely is the attack so complete as to wipe out an entire species. Renewal almost inevitably occurs, given enough time, because plants have an indeterminate growth style.
Physical defenses
Another partial answer to the question of why plants dominate the world is that many of them have developed effective physical defenses.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Reaching for the SunHow Plants Work, pp. 204 - 228Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011