Growth from Stress
I love jalapeños. I particularly love spicy jalapeños; however, the rest of my family - not so much. I recently learned, as I've been cooking with fresh jalapeños this summer, that you can tell how spicy it is by looking at the outside. The more stress marks a jalapeño has, the spicier it is. The stress marks are caused from the stress of the environment. Image via Stack Exchange I, then, decided to do a little more digging about stress from the environment in relation to vegetation. The majority of plants, when put under stress, will stop growing and eventually die. A particular hormone is released to signal the stress. However, there is this really cool plant that uses the stress of the environment to do the opposite of other plants - it grows and flourishes. The more stress it is under, the more it grows. This plant from Turkey is called Schrenkiella parvula . It has adapted to live under stressful conditions, particularly dry, salty, and cold (Castañón). Image via Wageni...
