FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Lately, all my plants have been adapting to their enviroments. (See Growlist:http://www.flytrapcare.com/phpBB3/sprui ... 11010.html) Normally around this time, you can tell if your doing a good job of suited them to their enviroment. Well, I've noticed I haven't be giving them enough light. So I looked around the house and all I found was an LED light. So I was wondering if LED light would work for my plants.

Unfortunately there's no blanket statement answer to your question. I'm going to assume it's a white light, because most people aren't going to have colored LED lamps just around the house. You can certainly give it a try, but LEDs, especially white LEDs vary greatly from different manufactures. There's no sure way to know the actual intensity of the lamp or the exact frequencies of light it emits without knowing specifics about the LEDs that are in it. My guess is that it probably won't have a high enough intensity for the plants, but you never know, you could get some great results. Certainly isn't going to hurt anything to try!

That's the short answer, here's a bit more on "why" (if you're interested). White LEDs are not actually "white." LEDs are a solid state (semiconductor) diode that emit photons in the visible light spectrum when they're in the active region. Since the electrons are all of the same element(s) that make up the diode, the electron always drops the same amount of energy, this means diodes are "monochromatic" or they only put out one color of light, like a laser. This is quite a bit different from an incandescent bulb or a fluorescent bulb that put out multiple frequencies of light. Since there is no such thing as a white photon, white LEDs are actually 3 LEDs in one casing. A red, blue and green LED. All of these colors add up and make "white" light. Since the white LED is 3 elements, each of those emits a specific frequency of light. Not only do LEDs only emit one color, but once they get into the fill active region, they only emit one intensity of light as well. So this is the "why" behind the "you can't know for sure" answer.