Artificial lights and Day length in Greenhouse

Artificial Light

Given proper temperature and humidity, many flowering plants, such as African violets, gloxinias, other gesneriads, and foliage plants, thrive under artificial light. The addition of fluorescent or incandescent light, or a combination of these, can convert dark, wasted space under benches and on window-less wall areas, as well as in basements and closets, into profitable plant-growing space.

Some greenhouse owners have found that fluorescent light speeds propagation and flowering of African violets, so they grow the plants in a combination of natural and artificial light.

Day Length

The growth and flowering of many plants depend on their daily hours of exposure to light-either natural or artificial. Without going into technical detail, this, roughly, is called photoperiodism, a phase of which is called day length. Plants are informally classified into three groups.

1. Dahlias, delphinium, pansies, tuberous begonias, and other plants which come into flower more rapidly during the long summer days of maximum light-or under the stimulus of artificial lighting-are called long-day plants.

2. Chrysanthemums, gardenias, poinsettias, etc., which start to flower when their light-exposure period goes down, are called short-day plants.

3. A third group contains plants-including African violets, carnations, and roses-which are unaffected by day length; these are called indifferent.

Science is now trying to determine whether plant growth and flowering are actually governed more by the daily period of uninterrupted darkness than by the length of exposure to light. Thus the plants that are now classed as long-day and short-day eventually may be called short-night and long-night plants.

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