Phototropism

Abstract

Plants and fungi are capable of directing their growth toward or away from light. The phenomenon of oriented plant growth, including phototropism, has been known for centuries, if not millennia. Common people as well as great luminaries from the sciences and arts commented about it or made it the subject of elaborate investigations. Theophrastos (372 to 287 BC), a pupil of Aristotle and acknowledged founder of botany, reported on this and related phenomena, such as leave movements in his volumes, Inquiry into Plants and Growth of Plants. One may safely conclude that astute observers as the Arabian scientist Hanifa Ad-Dinawari (d. 895 AD) and Albertus Magnus (1200 to 1280), both of whom described the nyktinastic movements of leaves and petals, were also aware of phototropism without explicitly describing it. The well-known sun tracking of sunflowers was mentioned by the French playwright, Jean-Baptiste Molière (1622 to 1673), in his play “Le malade imaginaire.”.