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Sacred Lotus: Plant Thermoregulation Explained

1) Angiosperms and plants metabolize food stored in their cells through oxygen to produce energy, generating heat as a byproduct. 2) The sacred lotus flower is able to regulate its temperature, keeping its flowers between 86-95 degrees even when the surrounding air is cooler at 41 degrees. 3) During its four day flowering period, the lotus flower shifts its metabolism and begins actively warming its flowers to around 90 degrees, believed to help the beetle pollinators that must warm their muscles to fly and pollinate the flower.

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95 views1 page

Sacred Lotus: Plant Thermoregulation Explained

1) Angiosperms and plants metabolize food stored in their cells through oxygen to produce energy, generating heat as a byproduct. 2) The sacred lotus flower is able to regulate its temperature, keeping its flowers between 86-95 degrees even when the surrounding air is cooler at 41 degrees. 3) During its four day flowering period, the lotus flower shifts its metabolism and begins actively warming its flowers to around 90 degrees, believed to help the beetle pollinators that must warm their muscles to fly and pollinate the flower.

Uploaded by

jklein2588
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

A Hunka, Hunka Burnin Buds

As you read this article be thinking about the following questions: 1) What metabolic process do angiosperms (flowering plants) and all plants do? 2) Why is it suspected that the lotus described in this article modifies its metabolism?

Plants, like animals, use oxygen to burn food stored in their cells for energy. In animals this process produces a lot of heat, part of which is used to help maintain a steady body temperature. Being rather sedentary, though, plants generally use less fuel and thus produce much less heat. But Roger Seymour, a zoologist at the University of Adelaide in Australia has found one plant that puts out as much heat as many a more mobile life-form. The sacred lotus, or Nelumbo nucifera, like a warm- blooded animal, can regulate its temperature, keeping its flowers at 86 to 95 degrees even if the air around it is as cool as 41 degrees. The lotus isnt the first plant known to elevate its temperature- -in the eighteenth century the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck noted the same property in a group of plants known as Arum lilies--but its by far the most advanced. The lotus is a much better thermoregulator than any other plant weve studied, says Seymour. Its better than a lot of mammals at maintaining a constant temperature. Most of the time the lotus behaves like other plants, its temperature fluctuating with the ambient heat, or lack of it. But during its four-day flowering period, Seymour found, the plant changes: its flowers begin to warm up. Seymour discovered this after inserting hair-thin metallic probes attached to a temperature meter into new flower buds and into three different parts of mature flowers--the petals, the stamens, and the receptacle, which houses the plants female reproductive parts. He monitored the lotus during its entire flowering period. The buds temperature, initially as low as 55 degrees, soared to an average of 90 degrees and held steady from the beginning to the end of flowering. Eighteen budding lotuses yielded the same result. How the flowers shift into high gear, however, is a mystery. What does the lotus gain from all this heat output? Botanists have suggested that Arum lilies heat their flowers to better disperse their scent. But Seymour thinks the lotus is catering to the various beetle species that pollinate it. To fly, the beetles must warm up their muscles to about 86 degrees by shivering violently, a process that requires time and energy. By providing heat, N. nucifera may be increasing the efficiency of its pollinators, allowing the beetles to spend more time pollinating and less time shivering.

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