Part of ScienceLiving things
Save to My Bitesize
All plants need light to live and grow. In this video, learn how they respond to changing light conditions to survive.
This video can not be played
Find out how plants respond to changing light conditions through the day and the year.
Gather round, children. No buzzing off please. We鈥檙e here in the lovely countryside to look at some plants and see how they respond to light.
Now, as some of you may know, all plants need light to live and grow. Plants don鈥檛 have eyes to see light like animals or insects, instead they sense light through special sense receptors inside their leaves.
These sense receptors can tell a plant if it鈥檚 day or night, if it鈥檚 summer or winter, and even whether the plant is out in the open or under cover.
In a crowded wood, plants compete with each other all the time for light. But plants don鈥檛 immediately shrivel up and die if they don鈥檛 get enough. Some plants, when they get shaded, start growing even faster to get back into the sun.
Other plants, like young sunflowers, actually follow the sun across the sky, turning their leaves into the sun鈥檚 rays to get as much light as possible, whatever the time of day.
When the sunflowers are fully grown, they don鈥檛 follow the sun across the sky any more, but stay facing east, so they can get all that bright morning light.
The sun is very bright, isn鈥檛 it kids? Plants may not have any eyes to shade, but we do. Sunglasses on! Cool鈥
Find out more by working through a topic
What is fertiliser?
What is a microorganism?
What is a life cycle?
How do animals reproduce?