Plants
As with animals, plants can be dwarfed through genetic engineering and selective breeding, but can also undergo natural, morphological changes to acclimatize to environmental stresses such as soil quality, light, drought, flood, cold, infection, and herbivory resulting in a dwarfed stature. Plants dwarfed due to environmental stress are said to be "stunted." The majority of dwarfing in plants occurs not from the damage environmental stresses inflict on them, but instead by hormones produced in response to the stress. Plant hormones act as a signal to the various tissues of plants inducing one or more responses, the class of plant hormone responsible for dwarfing in plants due to injury are called jasmonates. Such responses include, but are not limited to: less frequent cell divisions and reduction of cell elongation.
The propagation of decorative, dwarfed plants, known as bonsai, can occur by providing artificial environmental stress.
Read more about this topic: Dwarfing
Famous quotes containing the word plants:
“So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose, and each will receive wages according to the labor of each. For we are God’s servants, working together; you are God’s field, God’s building.”
—Bible: New Testament, 1 Corinthians 3:7-9.
“He who plants a tree
Plants a hope.”
—Lucy Larcom (1826–1893)
“What I did not yet know so intensely was the hatred of the white American for the black, a hatred so deep that I wonder if every white man in this country, when he plants a tree, doesn’t see Negroes hanging from its branches.”
—Jean Genet (1910–1986)