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Plants know which direction is up, but it was never entirely clear how they know. A brief blurb in the most recent Science summarizes a paper that shows how plants are able to use built-in tilt meters they have in their cells.
Gravity-sensing cells in plants contain tiny grains of starch called statoliths. The orientation of the statoliths changes with the plant's orientation. The gravity-sensing cells respond to even the slightest tilt off of the established plane. Plant statoliths seem to evade the rules of physics that govern other granular materials. In live-cell imaging of young wheat shoots, Bérut et al. observed that statolith piles behave more like slowly creeping liquids than like granular accumulations. The reason is that the individual statoliths are always jiggling around, perhaps because of interactions with the plant cytoskeleton.
Paper reference: 10.1073/pnas.1801895115 (2018)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 22 2018, @02:57AM (1 child)
ha, ha funny, better stick to the scotch.
I didn't word that very well, was curious which way plants grow when there isn't any 'up'. For example, does wheat still grow straight stalks, or does it curl up or something.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 22 2018, @03:05AM
Yes, I know. But since I didn't have the answer I thought I'd interject a bit of levity. I hope someone does come along that knows. Curiosity killed the cat but Satisfaction brought him back!