is my potato breathing?
Is your potato breathing? Yes it is, but very slowly. I was reading an article on Thursday by a science reporter and he wrote a line something like: "Unlike animals, plants don't breathe oxygen or exhale carbon dioxoide instead..." That mistaken notion is one of my pet peeves and I've seen it made many times. Sometimes even by biologists. Let's set the record straight. Plants breathe oxygen just like you or I--they just don't use lungs. We're all descended from the same unicellular creature billions of years ago--but don't expect a tree, bush, or head of lettuce to attend your family reunion. We have been drifting apart from plants for quite some time. In case you're wondering why in frickin' Hell you should care that plants breathe (actually the correct term is respirate as in respiration), it's because it changes the way we should treat them. If you want to slow down a plants internal processes, just deprive them of oxygen and slow down t...