Injuries of plants by Lucy Liu

  Many of the families have plants in their houses, so knowing the reasons of plants’ injuries and the ways to solve the problems is really important. One of the major factor that cases the damage of the plants is the temperature, it can be divided to three big parts: freezing injury, chilling injury, and heat injury.

   We all know that most of the plants get into the dormancy period before winters come, and plants could be killed by the freezing temperatures. The reason for that is water expands when frozen, it could easily break the cell wall of the plants. The symptoms that appears when the plants suffer from the freezing injury are browning, blackening, or curling of shoots, buds, or flowers. Surprisingly, plants have a natural kind of antifreeze that helps to lower the freezing points by employing sugars and alcohols,  and there is a process called hardening which would prepare plants for the temperature changes. Chilling injury is the damage that is accused from temperatures that are cold but not below freezing. The plants that have this kind of injury is likely to be desiccation, pitting, loss of chlorophyll, internal discoloration, and a higher rate of decay. The way that we can protect our plants from freezing of chilling injury is to mulch or cover the plants in the containers of sorts. Wind machines and overhead irrigation can also help, especially for larger areas.

   Heat injury is similar to cold injury. In that, tissues on the plants are injured from high temperatures. Tends to denature proteins or the plants suffers from desiccation. This may come in the form of tissue injury, poor plant growth and even death. Plants could avoid heat injury be reflecting heats. Most of the desert plants are able to reflect as much as 60% of the heat issued by the sun. even small items like spines are able to produce some amount of shade for a plant. Transpiration also acts as a mechanism for cooling the plants. As for human, we can can help the plants avoid heat injury be overhead irritations, and any shade that can be provided helps as well.

In conclusion, every plant has the temperature range that it fits to grow, so choosing the right kind for the right place is necessary.