Plant Wilting Essay

1. When moving a plant from one place to another, suggest why it is important to leave some original soil from the roots.

It is important to leave some original soil from the roots when moving a plant in order to avoid damaging the roots and also to initially keep the roots with some nutrients from the previous location. The plant will need to get accustomed to the new soil with original soil it will create an easier transition.

2. What is the usual cause of a plant wilting?

A plant wilts due to not having enough water in their cells so they lose their turgidity. The cell walls collapse if there is no structure created by water filling up each cell so the plants will wilt.

3. Why is transpiration an inevitable consequence of gas exchange

There is not a lot of room in a plant for the veins to be very spread apart and it would not be very logical to have these interconnected veins far away from each other as material needs to be transported all throughout the plant at a fairly quick rate.They must also be close together so that water can be transported from the xylem vessel to the phloem sieve tube and back when transporting sucrose from the source to the sink.

Lesson 3

7. If you removed the apical meristem from a typical plant, what would be the effect on further plant growth?

The apical meristem is what allows the plant to grow in height, vertically. If the apical meristem were to be cut the plant would stop growing taller and would only increase in width as new tissue can no longer be made to increase the height of the plant or length of the roots to support a taller plant.

8. How does auxin alter gene expression when influencing cell growth rates?

Auxin influences cell growth rate and alters gene expression by combining with a receptors that targets transcriptional repressors of auxin-response genes that will that either cause or inhibit plant growth. Auxins repress genes or the opposite, to allow other genes to stimulate the plant to grow. The role of this hormone is to change gene expression in a plant so that it can either grow or stop growing