Within forests around the world, taller trees are always shading out the smaller undergrowth of the forest floor. Taller trees are always dominant and receive the most sunlight. Therefore, smaller plants and vegetation living on the forest floor have to adapt to lesser amounts of sunlight and find new ways to produce enough energy to survive. This could be through many methods such as the Venus Fly Trap, which has the ability to trap small insects and digest them for their rich Nitrogen content. This is only one example of a plant, which has adapted to its poor habitat. .
There are many more which have also adapted to poor living conditions such as the Brassica Rapa used in this experiment. Some were standard Brassica Rapa which were the taller of the two used and the others were Rosette. The purpose of the experiment was to demonstrate that poor living conditions, amount of sunlight in this case, can directly affect the productivity and growth of the smaller Rosette Brassica Rapa plants. By placing several rosette plants with the taller, standard plants, this point was clearly demonstrated.