I'm going to jot down tid bits, trivias and stuff that I learnt out of pursuing a curiosity. Deliberately, there shall not be any conclusions made.
Plants take in only 5% of incident light due to the inefficient mechanism by which chlorophyll works… Heat is bad. Sunlight is not. — 2009/05/06 09:30
I have no citations to back this claim. This is based on my own observations from my garden and elsewhere.
Weed is subjective, of course. Turns out, vegetative reproduction strategy, in the short term, simply results in huge growth. There are certain useful plants that do grow vegetatively (ex: Mint) and their success can be seen in the market-perceived prices :) — 2009/05/18 03:22
Based on my observation of two weeds and watermelon. I guess, its afterall to their advantage to strangle neighbours, deny them of their ability to transport nutrients upwards for processing in leaves, fruits and flowers. Those who do so will tend to spread more.
Strangling was observed on watermelon completely killing a branch of the neighbouring beans plant, evidently only that branch died of malnutrition.
However, the strangling is only a function of how strong the bark / stem of the neighbour is. — 2009/05/18 03:22
Not sure if they go by 'colours' or 'smell' but I'm guessing they go by colours. Honey bees do touch down on a flower sprayed with 1. However, they don't tend to lurk around for long. This is evidently a much smaller time (I'd say, millseconds) compared to the typical 2-5 seconds that bees tend to spend on normal flowers.
Rats love beans. I'm not talking about just the beans 'pods' but the whole plant itself. — 2009/05/18 03:34
This was observed on the 'nursery' near which I had deliberately placed a shade as an experiment. These saplings have been moved to other areas where there is plenty sunlight. update this observation with whether the spotting goes away — 2009/05/18 03:34
Due to the virtue of their wide, fibrous and reasonably deep roots, these grass varieties are difficult to remove if there are useful plants nearby (their roots are entangled with the useful plant's roots). However, they do loosen the soil and make hard soil pretty porous. — 2009/05/18 03:46