The Players Because the genetic story of how plants flower turns out to involve many cellular “players”, as well as an intricate plot, perhaps it would be a good idea to first introduce the main “cast of characters”. Let’s start with florigen. As previously described, this is the so-called flowering…
We’ve seen that some plant species flower “autonomously” , that is, with little or no regard to environmental signals. However, most of what is known about how plants make flowers comes from research on plants that do rely on environmental guidance for flower initiation. It’s Time To Flower The correct…
Is There a Single Flower-Inducing Pathway? It’s well known that “florigen” is the signal that triggers the transition from vegetative to reproductive development in plants that flower in response to photoperiod. But some plants, for example the “Night-Neutral” (a.k.a., “Day-Neutral”) plants, apparently initiate flowering because of factors other than night…
Many Plants Flower in Response to Night Length For nearly 100 years scientists tried to identify the elusive flowering hormone called florigen. Early in the last century two USDA researchers took a major step toward this by discovering how to induce flowering in plants under controlled conditions. In 1920, these…
Warming Temps –> “Fast-Forward” Flowering Unusually warm temperatures often cause some plants to flower early. For example, this spring in eastern North America unseasonably high temperatures have induced some plants to put flowering on “fast forward”. Coincidentally, a recently-published research report (see Ref. 1 below) has revealed a genetic “switch”…
The First Flower? How did flowering plants (angiosperms) evolve from non-flowering seed plants (gymnosperms)? Or did they? When did the first flowers appear on this planet? And where on Earth did it occur? These are some of the most hotly-debated questions among botanists today, partly because some of the fossil-based…
Last time we had a taste of HOW plants tell time. But what, if any, are the adaptive advantages to plants for doing so? It has long been presumed that the ability to anticipate day/night cycles gives organisms a fitness advantage. For instance, this would allow plants to anticipate daylight…
Florigen = Tuberigen In an online report (ref 1 below) published this week in Nature, researchers in Spain and Japan have provided evidence that a protein similar to FT, currently regarded as the flowering signal florigen in plants, not only initiates flowering in potatoes, but also triggers tuber formation. “Seasonal…
Plant memory? Can some plants access past experiences so that this information can be incorporated into new responses, such as flowering? The answer is: Yes! (as illustrated in the photo on the the left). This picture shows a cabbage plant that was grown for five years in the laboratory of…
Can You Hear Me Now? A fundamental step in understanding how a signal works is identifying what specifically receives the signal. The signal in question here is the flower-inducing hormone in plants called florigen, which has recently been identified in several plant species, including rice. (Please see this recent post…