- Series:God’s Design, Plants, Transcript English
Psalm 113:3
“From the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same the LORD’S name is to be praised.”
In the previous Creation Moment, I talked about the snow buttercup, which lives in a cold environment and focuses some of the Sun’s heat onto its anthers and stamens in order to attract insects. To do this effectively, it moves to track the Sun during the daytime – a property known as heliotropism.
I was intrigued, therefore, when I read a New Scientist article that suggested the mystery of heliotropism had been solved. Researchers grew sunflowers in an artificial environment and, using lamps, gave them an artificial 24-hour day. Under these conditions, the flowers did not move, but when a “normal” 24-hour day was introduced, the flowers “tracked” the position of the non-existent real Sun.
This would suggest that the flowers are not so much drawn to the direction of the Sun; rather, they have an inbuilt 24-hour clock which was fooled by a 30-hour cycle, but not by the absence of a real moving Sun.
One researcher commented, “I’m continually astonished at how sophisticated plants are. They’re really masters of coping with the environment.”
It is this level of sophistication which is so problematic for evolutionists. The New Scientist article does not explain how and why certain plants developed this clock mechanism, because they can’t. But when we start from a biblical position, it makes sense to see God’s hand in the design of everything. It is He who has decided how and why such plants should operate.
Prayer: We do, indeed, praise Your Name, Lord God, from the rising of the Sun to its setting. Amen.
Author: Paul F. Taylor
Ref: Benson, E. (2016), Mystery of why some sunflowers track the sun across skies solved, < https://www.newscientist.com/article/2100051-mystery-of-why-some-sunflowers-track-the-sun-across-skies-solved/ >, accessed 10/31/2019. Image: CC BY-SA 2.0 Generic.
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