Naked Science Forum

Life Sciences => Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution => Topic started by: neilep on 14/12/2007 15:34:33

Title: Plants on Steroids ?
Post by: neilep on 14/12/2007 15:34:33

Like most American baseball players !! (sorry  [;)])...If I was to give a plant some steroids would I get bigger tougher harder hitting plants ?....(ooops...sorry.. [;)])

would the flowers be brighter, bigger....fruits be larger, tastier etc ?....could a runner bean hit a home run ?...(ooops...sorry again.. [;)])

Title: Plants on Steroids ?
Post by: Vcoolspice on 08/02/2008 16:50:05

Taking steroids is a definite no-no for human athletes, but treating plants with steroids could offer performance enhancement of a more desirable nature. Unfortunately, plant steroids are complex, expensive chemicals, and the biological mechanisms by which they alter plant growth and development have remained largely a mystery.

thanks to:  http://www.hhmi.org/news/chory6.html

Title: Re: Plants on Steroids ?
Post by: Monox D. I-Fly on 12/01/2019 03:31:56

What will happen if we feed steroids to Venus flytraps?

Title: Re: Plants on Steroids ?
Post by: chiralSPO on 12/01/2019 04:02:17

I don't think that steroids are likely to do much for plants. Many of the hormones that animals use for regulating growth are steroidal, but that doesn't mean they will work on plants.

However, plants DO have growth hormones, they just aren't steroids. Auxins and gibberellins are the two classes that come to mind (though it has been a looong time since I learned about these...)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibberellin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auxin

These will control how the plant grows, but I doubt that they would make a venus fly trap stronger...