do the plants get injured when do we pluck flowers? how are these wounds healed?
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Plants are injured when we pluck flowers. Over millennia of evolutionary generations, the plants today have finely honed the mechanisms for sealing the damaged cells at the point where we pluck the flower. The cells at the point of injury may die, but they are sealed quickly, within minutes by the cells below. The whole plant becomes aware, through auxin [ hormone] transportation all round the plant via the water flow from roots to leaves. The particular plant may have inherited a mechanism to save the part immediately below the injury; or this whole stem dies, but the rest of the plant remains alive and functioning.
A cleaner cut / injury may help the plant recover better. Only with experience such as nursery workers have, can you know which plant will survive such ‘injuries’. In nature, plants are ‘injured’ all the time by herbivorous animals eating plant parts, so plants will have mechanisms for healing injuries in most circumstances.
I remember picking Bluebells in the shady woods as a girl. We thought they would regenerate. But when we plucked the bulb from the soil as well, the Bluebells could not regenerate - we had removed their main regeneration organ, the bulb, that would have grown the next Bluebell plant, from year to year. With learning I realised it is better to take a photo and leave the Bluebells where they were, uninjured ! Even taking just the flowers injured them, some of which would not recover.
The message the plant gets when we pluck the blossoms is to produce more flowers, in some plants at least: roses, sweet peas, etc., - called ‘dead-heading’. In nature, blossoms / flowers grow, help pollination, seed fertilisation; then the flowers wither, die and fall, the seeds dispersed for the new plant generation.
Cut flowers are attractive but are short-lived because of injury. Potted complete plants are better, and a visit to Nature itself is very worthwhile. Take photos, leave only footprints.
A cleaner cut / injury may help the plant recover better. Only with experience such as nursery workers have, can you know which plant will survive such ‘injuries’. In nature, plants are ‘injured’ all the time by herbivorous animals eating plant parts, so plants will have mechanisms for healing injuries in most circumstances.
I remember picking Bluebells in the shady woods as a girl. We thought they would regenerate. But when we plucked the bulb from the soil as well, the Bluebells could not regenerate - we had removed their main regeneration organ, the bulb, that would have grown the next Bluebell plant, from year to year. With learning I realised it is better to take a photo and leave the Bluebells where they were, uninjured ! Even taking just the flowers injured them, some of which would not recover.
The message the plant gets when we pluck the blossoms is to produce more flowers, in some plants at least: roses, sweet peas, etc., - called ‘dead-heading’. In nature, blossoms / flowers grow, help pollination, seed fertilisation; then the flowers wither, die and fall, the seeds dispersed for the new plant generation.
Cut flowers are attractive but are short-lived because of injury. Potted complete plants are better, and a visit to Nature itself is very worthwhile. Take photos, leave only footprints.
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