People, including Charles Darwin, have been observing plant behavior for a long time and a recent study may offer some answers. If you watch a time lapse video of sunflower plants sprouting it shows they don't grow straight up, instead they spin around, corkscrew and in general wiggle around. The name for these movements is circumnutations and their purpose is to find the ideal growing spot, the perfect spot as it were, for each plant. While the usefulness of this study may not seem apparent it is hoped it will aid farmers in growing crops more efficiently. Once again proving that plants are more clever than they've been given credit for.
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