From Seed to Seed:
Plant Science for K-8 Educators

Light in the garden. Now let's get back to the garden and look at some of the ways in which familiar garden plants maximize their exposure to, and absorption of, sunlight.

Vining plants reach for the sky using various adaptations:

Pole bean vines twine around a support.

Clematis wraps its leaf stalks around a trellis.

The terminal leaves on a sweet pea's compound leaves are modified into tendrils that can grasp a support.

Virginia creeper has little suction cup-like appendages that can stick to almost anything.





English ivy forms aerial roots that penetrate rough surfaces.

Some plants, such as sunflower, simply grow tall very quickly, outpacing the competition. Others, like strawberry, send out horizontal runners, forming a new plant that will not have to compete with the parent plant for light, water, and nutrients.

It is also possible that various leaf shapes are partly adaptations to maximize the plant's ability to capture light. Let's speculate on how different leaf shapes might do this:

• Roses and locust trees have leaves composed of small leaflets, allowing sunlight to filter down to lower leaves.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Oak and maple have lobed or notched leaves, letting some light reach deep within the canopy.
  
  
  
• Coleus carries its leaves in opposite pairs so that, when viewed from above, most of the leaf surfaces are visible, and therefore will receive sunlight.
  
  
• Canada lily has leaves in whorls, allowing all of the leaves in the whorl to share the sunlight.