Flowering
MBT1159@RIGEL.TAMU.EDU
Tue, 8 Mar 1994 19:00:21 -0600 (CST)
Has anyone ever tried gassing a plant with ethelyne to get it to
flower? I've heard it used with other plants (like pine-apples) as well as
using gibberillic acid to simulate dormancy. There was a post recently about
using GA3 to get _Nepenthes_ seed to germinate, so why not try ethelyne to
stimulate flowering? On monecious plants (when the male and female parts are
on different parts of the same plant), you can use a plant hormone (I can't
remember which offhand) to get either more male flowers or more female flowers
(using a different hormone, of course).
The _Nepenthes_ that is flowering so much in that office may be exposed
to a source of ethelyne (fruit, or another plant, or whatever) that is causing
it to flower more. Either that or some sort of stress is "signaling" to the
plant to reproduce before the stress is too great (even though it doesn't
realize that it's being cultivated :) ).
-Matt