How do plants respond to light?

Gather round, children. No buzzing off please. We’re 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’t 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’s day or night, if it’s 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’t immediately shrivel up and die if they don’t 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’s rays to get as much light as possible, whatever the time of day.

When the sunflowers are fully grown, they don’t 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’t it kids? Plants may not have any eyes to shade, but we do. Sunglasses on! Cool…