I knew that my being in China would affect the flowering of my plants, but I had no idea how much this would be true. I’m seeing less than five percent of the usual crop of flowers, all because no one fed the plants last spring and summer. Of course, the Germans say that this is how to keep cactus - starve them. I can’t figure out how this nonsense got started. The more I fiddle with plants and the more I think about things, the more convinced I get that there is no fundamental difference between animals and plants and maybe among all the life forms. Certainly, we are identical biochemically. We run on the same fuel, namely fructose (glucose is converted to fructose, which then starts the process to get to ATP) and we use the same building blocks - amino acids - to make our various structures. We both store fats and carbohydrates as a reserve in case of want. You might want to point out that plants can’t walk around looking for food, but in a sense, they can. They send out lots of roots in the soil, looking for food. A further thought - putting a plant in a pot is like putting an animal into a cage. You, the cage maintainer, must feed and water the animal in the cage. The animal can’t run around getting its own food and water. The same with a plant in a pot. You have to feed and water the thing. It can’t leave the pot looking for food and water. It might try to do so. I’ve had lots of plants which tried to escape the limits of the pot by growing roots out of the pot, but usually the environment that the pot is sitting in is not conducive to root growth and survival, so the attempt to escape fails.

All photos are © 2015 Siegfried N. Lodwig, Ph.D

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