For a typical plant, 1000 cells in the previous example would be on the centimeter lengthscale. Thus, as plants grow, the ability for sorgoleone to reach photosynthetic tissues will diminish as more membranes would need to be crossed, shrinking the gradient that is driving sorgoleone flux. This finding is the mechanism underpinning why sorgoleone is most effective on shorter weeds and less effective on established plants, as a greater fraction of the plant cells would be accessible to inhibitory concentrations of sorgoleone. Since sorghum grows to be relatively tall, sorgoleone's impact on its native host would be minimal, so long as the plant localizes sorgoleone synthesis to the roots far away from photosynthetic tissues, and controls the timing to only enable exudate production after the plant reaches a specific height. The sorghum would then only need a relatively feeble detoxification mechanism to deal with the sorgoleone that travels up the plant and still grow unimpeded.