Abstract
Green walls can improve indoor air-quality by reducing concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2 ) and other air pollutants. Our study focused on the spider plant, Chlorophytum comosum, and devil’s ivy, Epipremnum aureum, both common green-wall plants that have been found to be efficient CO2 absorbers. Both species have multiple variants with varying degrees of leaf green-white segmentation. Since photosynthesis depends on the concentration of leaf chlorophylls, we hypothesized that green variants are more efficient carbon absorbers than green-white variants. In addi-tion, we tested the hypothesis that the photosynthetic rate of plants is affected by pot volume, as suggested by previous studies. We used a portable gas exchange system to determine the rate of photosynthesis of the study plants. No evidence was found for better photosynthetic performance in the green vs. green-white variants of each species. In fact, our results suggest the opposite. It was observed that a spider plants assimilated carbon more efficiently when grown in a larger pot volume. In conclusion, our study shows that in terms of carbon assimilation, green-white variants of spider plants are the better choice for indoor green walls. Their efficiency can be improved dramatically by increasing pot volume.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 3-12 |
Number of pages | 10 |
Journal | Journal of Green Building |
Volume | 16 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 1 Jun 2021 |
Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2021, College Publishing. All rights reserved.
Keywords
- Air quality
- Carbon dioxide
- Chlorophytum comosum
- Epipremnum aureum
- Indoor green wall
- Photosynthesis