Each plant regulates its development and performance (efficient movement of nutrients) in a balanced way, and thus they are able to adapt to the environment that surrounds them. The growth patterns, however, are reminiscent of the architecture of a city’s subway lines .
This is suggested by researchers from the Salk Institute (United States) who have studied the growth patterns of three different plant species using a 3D laser scanner and who have published their conclusions in the journal Cell Systems .
Growth patterns
The guidelines that plants follow to produce new shoots, and the regulation of their growth based on the transport of nutrients, have been the object of this study .
Although the mechanisms that intervene in the process are not yet known (something that will have to be elucidated in successive studies), as happens in the construction of metro networks, in which before creating new lines it is assessed whether their cost will be compensated with a efficient transportation of people, plants do something very similar. The difference is that in his case the cost of growth is energy and people are nutrients .