CAM photosynthesis is a clever adaptation some plants have where they turn light into sugar during the day, and only breathe in CO2 at night. This lets the plant close up its leaves so they don’t lose water during the heat of the day.

CAM plants use sunlight to turn malic acid into sugar, and every night they breathe in plenty of carbon dioxide, storing it as a fresh supply of malic acid. If you have keen senses, you may be able to taste the difference between a CAM plant harvested during the day and one harvested at night because of this variation in sugar and acid content.

Having evolved several times independantly, you see CAM in lots of different kinds of plants: air plants and bromeliads, which have poorly developed root systems; cacti and other succulents, which grow in hot dry environments; you even see it in some aquatic plants. For these, CAM serves not to conserve water, but carbon dioxide - which is of course hard to come by when you don’t have any air.

The “crassulacean” part of the name “crassulacean acid metabolism” is there because this phenomenon was first discovered in crassulas. Jade plants are an example of this genus.

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