BEHAVIOR OF PLANTS IN UNVENTILATED CHAMBERS^ 
F. C. Newcombe and Etta A. Bowerman 
Within the past five years the writers have heard several botanists 
of good standing express their behef in the need of ventilation for 
plants, the notion being that plants in small chambers, in dark rooms, 
and even fungi in closed vessels, would grow and react better if the 
surrounding air was in motion. 
This notion probably arose from the vagueness which, up to the 
last decade, existed as to the cause of "bad air" in rooms occupied 
by human beings, and the discovery, about ten years ago, that the ill 
effects of bad air could be removed by setting the air in motion. For 
over thirty years it has been known that bad air in unventilated rooms 
is not due to the accumulation of carbon dioxide. Various conjectures 
were offered as solutions of the problem. Perhaps it is not remarkable 
that some botanists should have imagined that their plants needed 
moving air for their well-being. This assumption of the need of 
moving air did not concern at all the oxygen or the carbon dioxide 
supply, but something else not more precisely defined. 
Since, within the last decade, bad air in a room has been found 
in human hygiene to be due to excessive temperature and humidity, 
as the matter has been summarized by Hill, Flack, Rowlands, and 
Walker,^ the effect of these conditions being manifested in the enlarge- 
ment of the peripheral blood vessels and the consequent derangement 
in the heart-beat and the respiratory rhythm, it would seem difficult 
to apply the same causes to plants which have no circulation corre- 
sponding to that of the higher animals. Moreover, plants in a confined 
space almost never raise the temperature to the optimum for their 
growth; and, although they make the atmosphere very humid, 
humidity is generally favorable to their growth. But however im- 
probable it may seem theoretically that experimental plants in confined 
spaces require ventilation, the plant physiologist needs to be assured 
^ Publication No. i68 from the Botanical Department of the University of 
Michigan. 
2 Hill, Flack, Rowlands, and Walker. Influence of Atmosphere on Health. 
Smithson. Misc. Coll. 60: i. 1913. 
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