Strange Lighted fields off HWY 3 Greenhouses?

On HWY3 Travelling between Pingtung and Taichung, I’ve noticed fields lit with hundreds of white lights. I’ve notice this for years. Today, for the first time, I think I saw them by daylight. It looks like fields covered by a white tent like covering… They were not lit, so I’m not sure that they are the same things I see at night.
What are they? I wonder what kind of plant needs artificial illumination to grow in a special way.

Orchids maybe?

Very likely chrysanthemum flowers, for cut flowers and for tea. They are easy to force into flowering by manipulating their photoperiod (i.e., day length) with artificial lights.

a side benefit for the power company is a generous off-peak load, so the electricity is sold to the farmers at much cheaper rates.

Interesting,
It’s always been something That sparked my curiousty as well.

In Puli they use lights for water caltrops, but that’s not on Hwy 3. In Tianwei, Changhua County, south of Taichung, there are lots of flower field, also lit up at night. Guess, energy-efficient LED lights make this practice viable.

Well, that, or subsidised energy.

I agree with urodacus: they’re most likely growing “foreign” plants that are day-length-sensitive (most plants are, to some degree) and which would otherwise not complete their reproductive cycle correctly at Taiwan’s latitude.

Or … it could be someone figured they can make more money out of their PV solar installation if they illuminate the panels at night :wink:

hmm Water caltrops are weird things. I always wondered what the hell those fruits were, or what one could do with Ling Chio… and now i know: waynesword.palomar.edu/ploct95.htm

Ooops, I meant water bamboo, not water caltrops, completely different thing.

LED? Maybe… It seems kind of incandescent yellowish. I really could not give it more of a look except out of the corner of my eye. I’m the one that was driving. It’s kind of late at night when I was driving past. 10:00 or so. I’m from 40 degrees north latitude. I think the latest the sun stays up in there in summer is 9:00PM Where on this earth would you rely on sunlight to grow flowers past 10PM. The tundra? I’m very ignorant about these things.
Anyway, flower make sense. Now all we need is a photo article with a visit to these actual greenhouses.

Cannabis? :idunno:

I’m no expert on photoperiod manipulation, but it’s possible that keeping the plants ‘awake’ for an abnormally long day for a smallish number of days is economically more efficient than accurately matching their natural habitat. Farmers do all sorts of weird stuff to plants here, like spraying them with hormones to make them flower/fruit early.

They’re CFL’s, the nasty ones that cause a hazmat zone if broken. In Zhanghua County they use them for flowers and grapes. LED’s are too expensive and impractical to use for anything but expensive plants and for graft purposes when dealing with street lights and stop lights. Gaslighting would be cheaper, but the agricultural electricity was/is subsidized.

Some plants are daylight sensitive for flowering or vegetating. Zhanghua swings between about 10.5(winter equinox) to 14.5 hours(summer equinox) of light per day from the sun. Any temperate zone plants will need supplemental lighting.