When researchers sent plants to the International Space Station in 2010, the flora wasn't meant to be decorative. Instead, the seeds of these small, white flowers - called Arabidopsis thaliana - were the subject of an experiment to study how plant roots developed in a weightless environment. Gravity is an important influence on root growth, but the scientists found that their space plants didn't need it to flourish. The research team from the University of Florida in Gainesville thinks this ability is related to a plant's inherent ability to orient itself as it grows. Since the flowers were orbiting some 220 miles (350 kilometers) above the Earth at the time, the NASA-funded experiment suggests that plants still retain an earthy instinct when they don't have gravity as a guide. The role of gravity in plant growth and development in terrestrial environments is well understood," said plant geneticist and study co-author Anna-Lisa Paul. "What is less well understood is how plants respond when you remove gravity. [The] bottom line is that although plants 'know' that they are in a novel environment, they ultimately do just fine." The finding further boosts the prospect of cultivating food plants in space and, eventually, on other planets. "There's really no impediment to growing plants in microgravity, such as on a long-term mission to Mars, or in reduced-gravity environments such as in specialized greenhouses on Mars or the moon," Paul said. The study findings appear in the latest issue of the journal BMC Plant Biology.