Cauliflory

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Flowers growing from the hard and woody horizontal stem of a Syzygium moorei, Australia Syzygium moorei flowering.jpg
Flowers growing from the hard and woody horizontal stem of a Syzygium moorei , Australia
Jackfruits growing directly from the trunk Artocarpus heterophyllus fruits at tree.jpg
Jackfruits growing directly from the trunk

Cauliflory is a botanical term referring to plants that flower and fruit from their main stems or woody trunks, rather than from new growth and shoots. [1] It is rare in temperate regions but common in tropical forests. [2]

Contents

There have been several strategies to distinguish among types of cauliflory historically, including the location or age of branch where inflorescences grow, [3] whether inflorescences attach to stolons or branches, [4] and whether axillary nodes or adventitious nodes develop into reproductive tissues. [5] Cauliflory is a non-homologous phenomenon with several different sources of development and evolutionary value. [5]

The development of buds in axillary cauliflorous species occurs through either the re-use of the same position or old tissue over seasons of growth or release from dormancy. [5] In both cases, vascularization of the bud must occur from pre-existing tissue, such as the pith. [6] In Cercis canadensis, dormant buds break annually in a sympodial pattern. [5] If flowers develop adventitiously, they form similarly to epicormic tissues and may be reactive to immediate environmental conditions. In certain species of Ficus, flowers may be produced from axillary buds in young plants and change to adventitious buds later. [7]

One frequently suggested hypothesis for the evolution of cauliflory is to allow trees to be pollinated or have their seeds dispersed by animals, especially bats, that climb on trunks and sturdy limbs to feed on the nectar and fruits. [8] Some species may instead have fruit which drops from the canopy and ripen only after they reach the ground, an alternative strategy termed nonfunctionally caulicarpic fruits. [8] In Ficus, there is not an association between the evolution of cauliflory as an apomorphy and ecological associations. [4] Alternative hypotheses have focused on competition for sugar and minerals between flowers and young leaves, [9] mechanical support for larger flowers and fruits particularly in Atrocarpus and Durio , [10] and evolutionary theory built on the plant as a metapopulation and differential rates of mutations across large plant bodies. [5]

An extreme version is flagelliflory where long, whip-like branches descend from the main trunk and bear all the inflorescences. The branches grow to and along the ground and even below it. As a result, the plant or tree's flowers can appear to emerge from the soil. Examples are known mostly from the plant families Annonaceae and Moraceae such as a species of Desmopsisterriflora but also include Couroupita guianensis (Lecythidaceae) and the cactus Weberocereus tunilla (Cactaceae). [2]


Families, genera and (some) species

(list incomplete)

See also

Related Research Articles

<i>Theobroma cacao</i> Species of tree grown for its cocoa beans

Theobroma cacao is a small evergreen tree in the family Malvaceae. Its seeds, cocoa beans, are used to make chocolate liquor, cocoa solids, cocoa butter and chocolate. Native to the tropics of the Americas, the largest producer of cocoa beans in 2018 was Ivory Coast, at 2.2 million tons.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Inflorescence</span> Term used in botany to describe a cluster of flowers

An inflorescence is a group or cluster of flowers arranged on a stem that is composed of a main branch or a complicated arrangement of branches. Morphologically, it is the modified part of the shoot of seed plants where flowers are formed on the axis of a plant. The modifications can involve the length and the nature of the internodes and the phyllotaxis, as well as variations in the proportions, compressions, swellings, adnations, connations and reduction of main and secondary axes. One can also define an inflorescence as the reproductive portion of a plant that bears a cluster of flowers in a specific pattern.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Banyan</span> Subgenus of plants, the banyans

A banyan, also spelled "banian", is a fig that develops accessory trunks from adventitious prop roots, allowing the tree to spread outwards indefinitely. This distinguishes banyans from other trees with a strangler habit that begin life as an epiphyte, i.e. a plant that grows on another plant, when its seed germinates in a crack or crevice of a host tree or edifice. "Banyan" often specifically denotes Ficus benghalensis, which is the national tree of India, though the name has also been generalized to denominate all figs that share a common life cycle and used systematically in taxonomy to denominate the subgenus Urostigma.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Malvaceae</span> Family of flowering plants

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<i>Cercis</i> Genus of flowering plants in the bean family Fabaceae

Cercis is a genus of about 10 species in the subfamily Cercidoideae of the pea family Fabaceae. native It contains small deciduous trees or large shrubs commonly known as redbuds. They are characterised by simple, rounded to heart-shaped leaves and pinkish-red flowers borne in the early spring on bare leafless shoots, on both branches and trunk ("cauliflory"). The genus contains ten species, native to warm temperate regions of North America, southern Europe, western and central Asia, and China.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Annonaceae</span> Family of flowering plants

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<i>Ficus racemosa</i> Species of fig

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kohekohe</span> Species of tree

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This page provides a glossary of plant morphology. Botanists and other biologists who study plant morphology use a number of different terms to classify and identify plant organs and parts that can be observed using no more than a handheld magnifying lens. This page provides help in understanding the numerous other pages describing plants by their various taxa. The accompanying page—Plant morphology—provides an overview of the science of the external form of plants. There is also an alphabetical list: Glossary of botanical terms. In contrast, this page deals with botanical terms in a systematic manner, with some illustrations, and organized by plant anatomy and function in plant physiology.

Important structures in plant development are buds, shoots, roots, leaves, and flowers; plants produce these tissues and structures throughout their life from meristems located at the tips of organs, or between mature tissues. Thus, a living plant always has embryonic tissues. By contrast, an animal embryo will very early produce all of the body parts that it will ever have in its life. When the animal is born, it has all its body parts and from that point will only grow larger and more mature. However, both plants and animals pass through a phylotypic stage that evolved independently and that causes a developmental constraint limiting morphological diversification.

<i>Ficus aurea</i> Species of strangler fig

Ficus aurea, commonly known as the Florida strangler fig, golden fig, or higuerón, is a tree in the family Moraceae that is native to the U.S. state of Florida, the northern and western Caribbean, southern Mexico and Central America south to Panama. The specific epithet aurea was applied by English botanist Thomas Nuttall who described the species in 1846.

<i>Ficus americana</i> Species of fig tree native to the Neotropics

Ficus americana, commonly known as the West Indian laurel fig or Jamaican cherry fig, is a tree in the family Moraceae which is native to the Caribbean, Mexico in the north, through Central and South America south to southern Brazil. It is an introduced species in Florida, USA. The species is variable; the five recognised subspecies were previously placed in a large number of other species.

<i>Dendrophthoe falcata</i> Species of mistletoe

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<i>Ficus septica</i> Species of fig

Ficus septica is a shrub or tree of the family Moraceae living at low altitudes from northeast India to north Australia (Queensland), and throughout Malesia. It lives on the edge of the vegetation, often in degraded environments. The seeds of this species are dispersed by numerous species, including fruit bats (Megachiroptera) when present.

Uvariopsis zenkeri Engl. is a species of flowering shrub in the family Annonaceae endemic to Cameroon and the Central African Republic.

<i>Tarsostenus</i> Genus of beetles

Tarsostenus is a genus of checkered beetles in the family Cleridae. It includes the cosmopolitan species T. univittatus.

Ficus bernaysii is a lowland rainforest tree in the family Moraceae, native to an area from New Guinea to the Solomon Islands. It is dioecious, and grows cauliflorous fruit. It is fed on by a wide range of animals.

<i>Pseuduvaria glabrescens</i> Species of plant in the family Annonaceae

Pseuduvaria glabrescens is a species of plant in the family Annonaceae. It is native to Australia. L.W. Jessup, the botanist who first formally described the species using the synonym Pseuduvaria mulgraveana var. glabrescens, named it after the underside of its leaves which have the quality of becoming hairless as they mature.

<i>Uvariopsis dicaprio</i> Species of tropical evergreen tree

Uvariopsis dicaprio is a species of tropical evergreen tree in the genus Uvariopsis. It is endemic to the Ebo Forest, in the Littoral Region of Cameroon. It was the first new plant species described in 2022, and was named after American actor Leonardo DiCaprio by botanists Martin Cheek and George Gosline, from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. U. dicaprio is classified as Critically Endangered in the IUCN Red List.

<i>Uvariopsis congensis</i> Species of flowering plant

Uvariopsis congensis is a species of plant in the Annonaceae family. It is native to Angola, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Sudan, Uganda, Zambia. Walter Robyns and Jean Ghesquière, the botanists who first formally described the species, named it after the Belgian Congo, now called the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the specimen they examined was collected in the town of Kisantu near the Inkisi River.

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