I dug up some iris and a few roses, put them in the trunk of the car-then it dropped down, rained and SNOWED today (Booooo:(
so the plants are still in the trunk. I thought they would be protected there overnight but now I am wondering if they will suffocate. Silly question, but do plants breathe ? LOL don't laugh at my dumb question !

Plants do need air but there is plenty in your trunk. They won't suffocate.

They are not heavy breathers.

Sulemacheu

Ok great, I just got them out this morning, the sun finally came out again. It got down in the 20s last night. I hope these cold temps go away soon! I was worried about them being closed up like that.

I recall reading something decades ago that said they consume oxygen just like us when they don't have light. They need to keep their metabolism going,

When they have enough light, they do produce lots of oxygen and get all or most of their metabolic energy from light. But MAYBE they also consume some oxygen in the light, and just produce more than they consume. That, I don't know.

But I agree with Ken: a trunk is big and is probably not airtight. The cold would have slowed down their metabolism so they would not have needed much oxygen anyway.

>> It got down in the 20s last night.

I think you were lucky they didn't freeze! Maybe the snow insulated the trunk.

Come on Rick, surely you are not saying plants, small enough to fit in a trunk of a car, use the same volume of oxygen that a human would consume. Perhaps in certain circumstances they use oxygen, but not even in the same universe of what we would consume.

I need a vacation!

No, I was agreeing with you.

Ken said:
>> Plants do need air but there is plenty in your trunk. They won't suffocate.

Rick said:
>> But I agree with Ken: a trunk is big and is probably not airtight.

I also agree with you that a human uses much more oxygen than an equal weight of plants would, even actively growing plants thrust into complete darkness.

Plants do use oxygen, just like animals, called respiration. It happens all the time but photosynthesis (in light) produces excess oxygen and consumes carbon dioxide. In the dark, plants use environmental oxygen but much more slowly than animals. Being in the trunk, for relatively small plants and in a poorly sealed area like that would be no risk at all.

The plants did fine and I put them in pots and they look great!
Thanks to everyone for your replies

;-)

As an experiment, I locked myself and two other friends in my trunk overnight, and we all suffocated, confirming our theories.

Did your autopsy confirm what we all already know?

sorry, couldn't resist lol

Well, they found that the part of my brain that controls making silly posts was over-enlarged and seemed to have taken over the part of the brain normally used for common sense.

I don't think we proved that humans don't photosynthesize, since we were all in the dark.

Otherwise, yes, we proved our theories. We would be working on an article for The Journal Of Ir-Reproducible Results if we weren't all dead.

I don't think there is anything I can say...

Of course not, you were the second person in the trunk!

Now we're doing the same thing that Beethoven and Bach are doing: decomposing.

Well decompose over my garden, maybe something will grow lol

Come, post with me!

I have a neighbor that I would LOVE to bury in my compost heap some dark night. But she might poison the other saprophytes.

LOL I have about a dozen neighbors cats I'd like to compost ! and some deer and some moles....

"Come, post with me."

Rick, that's the funniest line I've read in years.

Frilly, glad your plants are fine.

Thank you!

And being a speed reader, I read it just like you meant it.
'Compost with me.' Which, of course, made little sense.

Actually it doesn't take much to entertain me.