How do plants move if they don't have a brain or muscles?

Question

I'm sitting watching my three zinnia sprouts grow towards the sunlight, I switched them around to see how long it would take them to turn towards the light again it was under 30 minutes, wow. How do plants move if they don't have a brain or muscles?

Answer 1

Appearantly the plant has some functions to move toward the light.

The plants cell leaves moves where the sun is located brightest or if the plant is on the window and moves toward the light.

The plants cells allows it to move that way.

When i had a plant on the window the plant moved to get more sun light my plant covered the window as it has a will of its own it called homeostasis.

The plant can move itself wherever theres light that means if the plant is in a shade and has very little sunlight it can move to get more light.

I am not saying that the plant can get out of the soil i am saying that the plant can stretch or grow more quickly to retrieve more light.

Answer 2

they don't move, they grow

chemicals called auxins produced at the growing tip, cells on light side of stem stay small, cells on shaded side of stem elongate, that causes stem to bend over towards the light

Answer 3

Two major methods; 1) differential growth of cells and 2) pumping water into or out of specific cells to "inflate" or "deflate" them (guard cells opening and closing stomata are good examples of this).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_plant...

http://www.biologie.uni-hamburg.de/b-onl...

If you can find it, Malcolm Wilkins wrote an excellent book on plant physiology for "nonscientists" -- it's called "Plant watching: How Plants Remember, Tell Time, Form Partnerships and more ", and well worth any time you might spend with it.  Out of print, but you should be able to get it on interlibrary loan or from a good used booksource like alibris or abe.com  There's a good section in there on movements of plants.