Bigger Leaves

For the longest time, I observed that the money plants had bigger leaves on top. The higher they went, the larger the leaves got. I accepted it as fact, but never really sought out the answer to this phenomenon. My initial assumption was that they went higher to get more sunlight so they made larger leaves. The assumption held water until I realized that not all higher spots were better exposed to the sun. There goes one hypothesis.

While I was walking along the school corridors, I looked at the huge leaves of the money plant, and asked it why its leaves were so big. Then I got a flash of insight. The answer was transpiration. Now, money plants have fleshy stems that transpiration pull due to their suppleness. The higher they got, the more power they lost. They simply needed larger leaves so the transpiration pull would be great enough to overcome gravity and the lost power. Trees didn't need such a mechanism because of their woody trunks. Hence their leaves were almost always around the same size according to the species.

Sometimes it's amazing how insight works. You just idly look at something and meditate on its purpose, then everything simply clicks in place.