Flowers Accommodate Short Growing Season

close photograph of light purple flower during the day

Biological Strategy

Primrose

Mary Hoff

Image: Björn S. / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY SA - Creative Commons Attribution + ShareAlike

Pollinate

One of the ways that plants can produce offspring is by making seeds that contain the genetic information to produce a new plant. Seeds can only be produced when pollen grains reach the hidden ovaries within a flower. Flowers have developed wildly diverse forms and activities, such as the production of sweet nectar to attract organisms such as bees and butterflies, that move from flower to flower, transferring pollen. Flowers will also adapt to make use of environmental influences such as wind and water as pollinators.

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Adapt Behaviors

The environment is constantly changing, and if living systems can’t adapt to these changes, they don’t survive. Environmental changes can be cyclic such as seasons, sudden such as floods or forest fires, or gradual but long-term, such as ecosystems shifting from early to mature stages. These changes require some flexibility in behavioral responses to match the specific conditions. For example, as a fish called the lamprey swims, it constantly faces changes in currents. Skin sensors help it detect those changes and adjust its motion accordingly.

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Protect From Temperature

Many living systems function best within specific temperature ranges. Temperatures higher or lower than that range can negatively impact a living system’s physiological or chemical processes, and damage its exterior or interior. Living systems must manage high or low temperatures using minimal energy, which often requires controlling responses along incremental temperature changes. To do so, living systems use a variety of strategies, such as avoiding high or low temperatures, removing excess heat, and holding heat in. Insulation is a well-known example of managing low temperatures by retaining heat using thick layers of hair, fur, or feathers to hold warm air next to the skin.

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Regulate Reproduction or Growth

Reproduction and growth are two physiological processes that occur in all living systems. There are situations when conditions are right for both, and other situations when continuing either harms the living system because both have a very high energy cost. Reproduction and growth are unique in that both can stop until conditions improve, although stopping either for an extended time can cause problems. An example of regulating reproduction is a process called delayed implantation or embryonic diapause found in some mammals, such as otters. An otter’s embryos sometimes temporarily cease developing and won’t develop further until the female senses that conditions are suitable.

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Capture, Absorb, or Filter Energy

Energy is naturally available in many forms, including kinetic, potential, thermal, elastic, radiant, chemical, and more. All living systems require energy to carry out their many activities, and have developed strategies appropriate to one or more of those forms. For example, some plants maximize their surface area available for capturing radiant energy from the sun while others have strategies to focus scattered light onto photosynthesizing areas.

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Flowering Plants

Clade Angiosperms (“receptacle seed”): Dandelions, oaks, grasses, cacti, apples

With 416 families containing some 300,000 known species, angiosperms are the most diverse group of plants, and they can be found around the globe in a wide variety of habitats. They are characterized by seeds that grow enclosed in ovaries, which are enclosed in flowers. The floral organs then develop into fruits of myriad kinds and dimensions, from simple seed casings on maples to elaborate fleshy growths like papayas. The oldest flower known from fossils, Montsechia vidalii, appeared during the Jurassic Period 130 million years ago. They are the primary food source for herbivorous animals, which in turn makes them the indirect food source for carnivores as well.

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Flowers of the alpine snowbell bloom during a short growing season by forming buds in late summer and developing them beneath the snow in winter.

Introduction

High in the Alps and other European mountain ranges, the tiny pink dwarf snowbell (Soldanella pusilla) spends much of the year buried under many feet of snow. But because its blossom began forming the previous growing season, when it’s finally freed from frost sometime in July, the plant is ready to go.

Shortly after emerging—and often while still surrounded by snow—it blooms and begins to attract bees. This quick response allows it to complete its reproductive cycle and produce mature seed in the few short weeks between snowmelt and the beginning of the next winter season.

Image: Bernd Haynold / Wikimedia commons /

Soldanella alpina, Berchtesgadener Alpen, Germany

Image: Gnomefilliere / Wikimedia commons /

Soldanelle des Alpes- Soldanella alpina

The Strategy

The dwarf snowbell uses multiple adaptations to fit its reproductive cycle into such a short season. Beginning in the summer, it forms its flower buds, which then spend the first part of the winter dormant under the snow, poised to grow. It also stores bountiful amounts of sugar, which will provide energy for survival, growth, and development in the absence of sun.

As air temperatures plummet below freezing, it uses the insulating properties of snow to maintain its temperature at or near a tolerable 32 °F (0 °C), avoiding tissue damage from internal ice crystals.

And remarkably, the dwarf snowbell doesn’t rely on external cues such as daylength—which would not be helpful under such heavy snow cover—to determine when to start developing its blossom. Rather, it uses an internal clock whose workings are not yet fully understood. Once the snow is reduced to a depth of 6 inches (15 centimeters) or so, the plant’s reddish flower stalk and pink flower absorb and radiate sunlight onto the snow around the plant. Thanks to the plant’s short stature, that heat then creates a warm patch in its immediate vicinity that helps the remaining snow covering the plant to melt.

Once the snow is reduced to a depth of 6 inches (15 centimeters) or so, the plant’s reddish flower stalk and pink flower absorb and radiate sunlight onto the snow around the plant

When the dwarf snowbell is finally free from the snow, it has yet one more that comes into play. Both the flower stalk and flower are spring-loaded, so the stalk can quickly go from its horizontal position under the snow to a vertical position that helps it attract the bumblebees that pollinate it.

Should the flowers for some reason fail to emerge in time, the dwarf snowbell has a backup plan: it will reproduce vegetatively, creating clones of itself.

The Potential

The dwarf snowbell’s strategy for completing the cycle from blossom to seed in an extraordinarily short time might provide inspiration for enhancing the ability of crops to produce under short growing seasons or under cold conditions. The plant’s ability to speed snowmelt using dark colors offers insights for snow-removal technologies applicable to everything from maintaining highways to enhancing winter output of solar panels. And the use of snow for insulation could be applied to enhancing energy efficiency in buildings in cold climates, providing protection for livestock, and more.

close up photograph of a large green plant

Biological Strategy

Leaves Protect From Freezing

Giant groundsel

Insulated outer leaves of the cabbage groundsel protect tender inner leaves from freezing by folding inward to enclose them at night.

aerial image of polar sea ice bridge with white ice and dark blue waters

Biological Strategy

Protein Enables Growth in Freezing Temperatures

The protein secretion of the sea ice diatom enables growth in freezing temperatures by inhibiting the recrystallization of the surrounding ice crystals

Last Updated August 18, 2016

References

Book

The Private Life of Plants

21/08/1995 | David Attenborough

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