The Control of Flowering in the Strawberry Fragaria ananassa Duch.

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Flowering of individual daughter plants on strawberry runners was studied under field conditions. The median daughters along the runners were the first to flower and the highest in yield. Severing the stolon close to the attachment to the post-harvest mother plant hastened flowering of the more proximal daughters. A decreasing linear relationship was found between date of rooting of the daughter plant and the time elapsed from this date to flowering. These findings were interpreted as indicating control of flowering in daughter plants by an endogenous gradient along the runner on the one hand, and by the photo-thermic environment at time of rooting of the daughter plant on the other hand. The delay in flowering of the proximal daughters is assumed to be due to an inhibition transmitted along the runner from the post-harvest mother plant. The delay in flowering of the distal ones is attributable to the fact that their rooting took place after their elder sisters had started reproductive development, though juvenility may be a contributing factor. Studies were also made with pairs of vegetative clonal partners, one of which was placed in conditions inductive for flowering and the other in noninductive conditions. Translocation of a flowering stimulus from the plant in inductive conditions to its partner was not observed. A flower-inhibiting stimulus was translocated from the plant in non-inductive conditions to its partner in inductive conditions, but only when the former was the younger of the two. This was interpreted as indicating an accumulation in buds of the daughter plants of a flower-inhibiting substance, which was translocated from the mother plant along a concentration gradient in the runner.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: