Wilting flowers may not mean poor plant health; instead, they could be part of a smart resource-saving strategy.
A study from Macquarie University published in Plant Biology shows that some plants, like the Christmas Bell (Blandfordia grandiflora), reuse resources from wilting flowers to help future growth and reproduction.
Lead researcher Professor Graham Pyke explains that this is the first direct evidence of plants salvaging nutrients from wilting flowers.
These resources include energy, carbohydrates, and essential nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus, which are stored in the plant’s roots and corms (bulb-like structures).
By saving these resources, the plant can produce new flowering stems in the next season, usually a year later.
The three-year study focused on Christmas Bells, a perennial flowering plant native to eastern Australia. Using a plantation of native Christmas Bells and a commercial shadehouse, the researchers controlled pollination and wilting of the flowers and studied the effects on seed production and reflowering.
Surprisingly, the researchers found that the plants didn’t use the resources from wilting flowers to boost short-term reproduction in the current season. Instead, the plants stored these nutrients for the following year’s flowering. “It turns out the plants were playing a longer game than we anticipated,” says Professor Pyke.
This resource-saving method highlights an important concept in plant biology called “plant economics,” where plants balance limited resources for various needs. “Plants have to make trade-offs.
Investing resources in one area means they can’t use as much in another,” explains Professor Pyke. By allowing flowers to wilt, plants can reclaim valuable resources to support new blooms in future seasons, instead of using them right away.
Not all plants manage their flowers the same way. Some keep their flowers blooming long after they’re useful for pollination, while others, like jacarandas and frangipanis, drop flowers before they wilt.
In the study, scientists tested this resource-saving strategy by comparing plants with wilting flowers to those where wilting was prevented. They found that plants with wilting flowers were more likely to bloom again the next season. Other factors, such as stem height and number of flowers, also affected seed production.
Professor Pyke says this discovery opens doors for further research into how different plants manage their resources.
Future studies could look into what exactly is being salvaged, how plants move and store these resources, and whether this long-term savings strategy outweighs the costs of producing flowers in the first place.
