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I have some live plants in a new tank I set up for my kingsnake, and it has a heat lamp. One of the plants at the opposite end of the tank has begun growing almost horizontally (which is weird because it's a bulb I collected outside that was growing vertically), almost like it was pointing towards the heat lamp.

Are plants attracted to red light? What can I do to get it vertical again?

Last edited by Cory Addict at 13-Jan-2006 10:11

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

I would suspect it is the light. Plants allegedly produce different amounts of hormones on different sides of stems based on how much light they recieve. That is why they grow toward lights (and some plants like sunflowers are well-known for moving toward light even within a day) I never heard anything saying if that was or wasn't the infrared part of the spectrum.

EDIT: to get it to grow vertically, you will have to move the light above it, ultimately. Until it's growing strongly you may want to prop it up (maybe tied to a stake) to train it the right way, but until the light is moved it will continue growing toward it.

Last edited by superlion at 12-Jan-2006 22:12

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Some plants will display phototropism towards just about any light source, so the heat lamp is almost certainly what is causing the abnormal growth. Here's some interesting movies showing phototropism.

Unfortunately, I don't really have any other suggestion than to set up a small light source on the other side of the plant (like a desk lamp with a small wattage bulb) and keep it somewhat oriented towards the tank. That could throw off the thermal zones of the tank, though. Hopefully someone else has a better idea.

Joe Potato

The thing is, I have a fluorescent light on the tank as well (which is much brighter than the heat lamp), so I don't know why the plant would choose the heat lamp. The fluorescent light is also directly above the plants. Only one plant is doing this, even though I have other plants in there of the same species.

I think this plant is just retarded.

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

"I think this plant is just retarded."

I think I have a few of those !

The Amazon Nut...

Other possible reasons as well;

Is there a close window in the same direction as the heat lamp? It may be growing towards the sunlight.

Since you and us don't know what kind of plant it is, maybe this is its natural way of growth and propagation. After it gets so big, it will lay over onto the substrate and root into it.

Maybe while you did not see, the snake went across and on it, and bent it over, and now it has corrected the damage caused and grown that way.


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There is always a bigger fish...

Your plant is growing toward the red light for a very good reason.

Chlorophyll absorbs light from th ered and the blue ends of the spectrum. The green light is reflected, which is why, hey presto, plants are green!

However, chlorophyll makes use of the red end of the spectrum for the light reaction. Chlorophyll a, for example, has an absorption peak at around 680 nanometres wavelength, which is well into the red, and it is energy from photons whose wavelength is at this peak that is used to power the light reaction part of photosynthesis. Photosystem II uses 680 nanometres, while Photosystem I uses 700 nanometres.

So, if you illuminate your plant with a red light, it will grow toward that red light source, because that source is providing its photosynthetic machinery with the most efficient energy input. You can actually test this experimentally by arranging light sources of different colours, putting plants underneath them, and watching which light sources attract the plants preferentially. I'll bet you'll find that red lights draw a LOT of plants toward them, for the reason cited above.



Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

I do know what kind of plant it is. It's called Indian Soap, a wild bulb that is very common sround here. They do not normally grow horizontally, and they don't send out runners (no monocots that I know of do).

I think it's just because I was leaving the heat lamp on at night while the fluorescent light was turned off. I've been turning the heat lamp at night for the past couple of nights, and it's starting to correct itself it looks like. The snake is native around here so it's used to cold nights (if 65 degrees can be considered cold).

I'll just keep turning it off at night and see how it does. It's just weird because it's the only plant in the tank doing it.

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

Put the red light on the other side of the plant and if in the event that you cannot try rotating the plant itself. I had this problem with a few terrestrial plants, my old ficus used to do this and would start to lean and we had to rotate it so that the light source was evenly (time wise) exposed to light. This fixed our "lean" problem.

edit: you could also balance by adding a second light which would strictly be for the plant so you dont over heat the snake.

Last edited by mrwizerd at 16-Jan-2006 01:07