Water evaporates from holes in the leaves called stomata so to avoid this, these holes must be closed. That is one reason for the succulent appearance of many CAM species.īecause these plants so often grow in hot, dry climates, they need to minimize water loss. CAM plants deal with this by storing it in large vacuoles.
For starters, having acid hanging around inside your leaves is not necessarily a good thing. Similar to the C4 pathway, CO2 is taken into the leaves of the plant and stored as an organic acid. It was first described in succulents in the family Crassulaceae. The interesting thing about CAM photosynthesis is that it separates out the different reactions in the photosynthetic pathway on a temporal basis.ĬAM is short for Crassulacean acid metabolism. Last week I wrote about the C4 pathway and how it has helped plants in hot, dry places, but the CAM pathway is yet another adaptation to such climates. In reality, vanillas are CAM photosynthesizers. The other part of the statement that was wrong (again, if taken literally) is that C3 is the photosynthetic pathway of the vanilla orchid.
They are anything but vanilla the adjective. I have written before about the reproductive ecology of Vanilla orchids (). To do this he said "it is the vanilla pathway." In this context, he was using vanilla as an adjective meaning "plain or ordinary." Of course, this was all very facetious, however, I thought it interesting and funny how, if taken literally, that statement was just plain wrong. The professor was trying to make the point that C3 photosynthesis is the most common photosynthetic pathway on the planet. I was in a lecture the other day and I heard something that made the plant nut inside of me chuckle.
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