i know that most plants photosythesize useing red light because its the oposite in the spectrum to the chlorophyl in their leaves and i know some plants photosynthesize useing green light because they have red leaves (or so i was told in school biology) i was wondering if anyone knew of any plants the photosythesize useing light outside of the visible spectrum. like plants that survive in remote caves and such that don't encounter visible light (i suppose if they were in remote caves they wouldn't encounter any light but you get the picture).

cheers, dub.

as far as i know there are no plants that use non-visible light for photosynthesis. most of the light that hits the surface of the earth is visible light so it makes sense for plants to only absorb that kind of em radiation. what about plants that grown in dark caves? simple, plants don't grow in dark caves. if you've seen anything that looked like vegetation in a dark cave then it was a fungus.

if you keep a plant in the dark, "dark" reactions (the calvin cycle) will occur untill it starves since these reactions are not enough to sustain the plant for an extended period of time. However a plant that absorbs something such as x-rays would only develop in a place where x-rays were abundant.

It'd possible that genetic engineering could develop a plant with the ability to use a much larger part of the EM spectrum, but I'm thinking that'd be like building an unstoppable robot killer without an off switch.

quote:

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Originally posted by NGNeer:
but I'm thinking that'd be like building an unstoppable robot killer without an off switch.

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If you consider a slow plant that eats x-ray's an unstoppable robot, yes.

Most plants use a bit of invisible UV radiation.

ok, thx for input ppl. its just something i've been wondering about for a while.

cheers, dub.

if it was advantageous/possible the blind watchmaker would have seen to it already.

yessss, just what i was thinking.

Blind watchmaker?

I'm guessing this is some term used for God/nature.....

That would be my guess.

As for the "unstoppable robot" thing, huh? This plant or that plant would be a little more efficent, but that's it. If you want an example of an "unstoppable robot" of a plant, look up kudzu.

damm, thats a pretty scary plant.