Why do some plants have the ability to thrive in both sun and shade environments while other, even closely related species, are relegated to only sun or shade environments? My lab group is trying to tease apart this question using greenhouse grown plants as well as tree canopies. We use a combination of approaches including whole plant physiology to examine differences in light movement across leaves, cell biology to look for changes in internal leaf and cell structure, and molecular biology to look for differences in gene expression between shade tolerant and sun plants.