• Question: How do plants go through puberty (if they do) and how long does it take them?

    Asked by anon-249476 to Toby, Sarah, NathanJ on 16 Mar 2020.
    • Photo: Nathan James

      Nathan James answered on 16 Mar 2020:

      I like this question! But unfortunately I don’t know the answer. I don’t think that plants have an equivalent of puberty, but they do develop sex organs (flowers, for example) with male and female cells (like the sperm and egg cells of animals). It takes time for a plant to grow to sexual maturity (different for each species), so there must be signals that tell the plant that it’s ready to reproduce!

Comments

  • Photo: Sophie

    Sophie commented on :

    Strictly speaking, no. But most flowering plants do progress through developmental stages somewhat analogous to puberty.

    After germination, many flowering plant species enter a juvenile phase in which they are not “competent” to flower. That is, even when experiencing conditions favorable to flowering, they lack the ability to flower.

    This may be because some plants may not produce flowers until they are sufficiently robust enough to support the drain on resources required by flowering. In other words, a plant may not flower until it has enough leaves (photosynthetic sugar production) to build and support flowers.

    This juvenile phase to adult phase transition, which affects many aspects of plant development, is the classic example of an “autonomous” flowering pathway.

    The plant will become competent to flower after it makes a developmental transition to its adult phase, which may be determined primarily by the size of the plant. This size-related competency to flower may also be gauged by the plant’s age, presuming that the older a plant is, the bigger it is.