Field of Science

Friday fabulous flower - a repeat, but better

While tropical plants are generally day-neutral in terms of flowering, something about the short days (actually it's the long nights) stimulates a lot of our glasshouse tropical plants to flower.  It makes visiting the glasshouse in February and March a lot of fun. One of our stranger plants is a semi-viney member of the screwpine family, the genus Freycinetia multiflora, a plant that has been featured as a FFF before, but the flowering this time is even better, bigger clusters, brighter color. The flower like structures are actually three ranks of bracts that surround 3 inflorescences hidden within. The glasshouse used to have a real Pandanus, but it got way, way too big and had to be cut up and removed in pieces.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You could have done what a wealthy Bostonian did and simply raise the glasshouse another story to allow for more growth on one of her specialty plants - just think of the opportunities! Nice picture by the way, reminding me of plants I will never be able to grow. How large are your greenhouses there at Never To Be Named U?

The Phytophactor said...

Oh, sure, if we had money we could super-size our glasshouse, but we're part of Lincolnland, and we're broke. Not sure of the square footage; it's not large by university standards.

mr_subjunctive said...

Want a Pandanus veitchii? 'Cause I could make that happen, if you're interested.