The plant in a sealed bottle has been growing without watering for over 40 years

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

In Great Britain lives 80-year-old amateur gardener David Latimer, who now has a world attraction - a "miracle garden" in a large bottle. What is so unusual in this, because many have learned to grow their own garden in a bottle?

The originality of David Latimer's "miracle garden" lies in the fact that the bottle has not been opened and has been kept sealed for over forty years.

Back in 1960, David Latimer decided to plant a garden in a bottle - just like that, out of nothing to do. As a glass flask, he used a forty-liter bottle of sulfuric acid. He put an earthen mixture into it, and took liquid compost as fertilizer. There was a lot of compost, almost half a bottle. David deliberately only used 140 milliliters of water. Carefully, with the help of a wire, the gardener planted the seedlings inside a glass flask.

The start of the experiment was not very successful. David tried to root in the bottle and saw, and ivy, and chlorophytum. Chlorophytum, having lived in a bottle for two whole years, still disappeared. And then David Latimer put the most ordinary indoor Tradescantia in a bottle.

Tradescantia continued to grow until it filled the entire volume of the bottle. David watered it only twice during this time: when planting and in the early 70s of the last century. Twelve years later, after watering his Tradescantia a second time, David tightly closed his bottle to see how the plant would behave in complete isolation from the outside world. And now more than forty years have passed since the plant continues to grow and develop beautifully.

The bottle with the "miracle garden" is about two meters from the window, so there is enough sunlight tradescantia. In order for shoots and leaves to grow evenly throughout the entire volume of the bottle, David sometimes turns it in different directions towards the light. There is no more care for the "miracle garden".

During this time, a kind of ecosystem in miniature was formed in the bottle. Despite the fact that the plant is isolated from the outside world by the walls of the bottle and the cork, it absorbs sunlight, and with its help photosynthesis is carried out. Oxygen is released by the plant during photosynthesis. The release of oxygen is accompanied by humidification of the air in the bottle. Moisture accumulates on the walls of the bottle and "rains" - flows down the glass walls into the soil.

Leaves and shoots growing in the middle of the bottle and not receiving enough sunlight fall off and rot on the top of the soil layer in the bottle. The decay of fallen leaves is accompanied by the release of carbon dioxide, which is also used for photosynthesis and nutrition. It is the cycle of photosynthesis that plays a decisive role in a miniature ecosystem, formed in a bottle. Tradescantia lives on the nutrients it creates itself.

The photographs show that Tradescantia is doing very well without receiving water and fresh air for over forty years. David Latimer's experiment continues.