pls questions

How did this course come about?

Professor invited by the USDA Foreign Ag Service to do a week long workshop on flower production in Montenegro to help maintain peace in the Balkans

What is flower confidential about?

An expose of the flower industry (where they come from, how they're distributed, genetics + production of a flower)

Horticulture

The growing of fruits, vegetables, and flowers. Wherever man has to impose a lot of activities on the plants to make the them grow as we want (pinching, pruning)

Orangerie

greenhouse or conservatory (orange trees inside the winter)

Floriculture

The cultivation of plants for their flowers.

Cut flowers, bedding plants, container-grown landscape plants, flowering potted plants and foliage potted plants!

Production (greenhouse and nursery production)

Postharvest handling

Using flowers

Amorphophallus titanum (titan arum)

Corpse flower! Very large with a stalk with thousands of tiny flowers as the central part. Stinky!

Sepals

Leaflike parts that cover and protect the flower bud

Petals

Located above sepals, frequently brightly colored to attract pollinators

Receptacle

The base of a flower; the part of the stem that is the site of attachment of the floral organs.

Pedicel

The stalk of a flower.

Stamen

The male reproductive part of a flower; filament + anther

Filament

the stalk of a stamen

Anther

the part of a stamen that contains the pollen.

Carpel/Pistil

The female reproductive organ of a flower, consisting of the stigma, style, and ovary.

Stigma

Catches pollen

Style

Tube that connects the stigma to the ovary

Ovary

In flowers, the portion of a carpel in which the egg-containing ovules develop.

What do ovules develop into?

seeds

What do ovaries develop into?

friut

Perfect flower

has both male/female reproductive parts

Imperfect flower

flower that is only male or only female; can be monoecious or dioecious

Monoecious

having male and female reproductive organs in the same plant (ex. squash)

Dioecious

having male and female reproductive organs in separate plants (ex. Gingko)

Complete flower

A flower that has all four basic floral organs: sepals, petals, stamens, and carpels.

Incomplete flower

Lacks one or more of the four basic floral organs (sepals, petals, stamens, and carpels)

All imperfect flowers are incomplete! Because they either have a stamen or a carpel.

Non-technical definition of a flower

the blossom of a plant

Technical definition of a flower

the part of the seed plant comprising the reproductive organs and their envelopes if any, especially when such envelopes are more or less conspicuous in form and color

blossom

the flower of a plant (not technical)

inflorescence

how flowers are grouped together

Simple flower

One single flower per stalk

Compound flower

more than one flower grouped together; inflorescence looks like many flowers

Composite flower

more than one flower grouped together; inflorescence looks like one blossom/flower (EX. sunflower)

Raceme flowers

Compound flowers with unbranched, indeterminate inflorescence with short floral stalks along the axis (lily of the valley)

Spike flowers

type of raceme that don't have pedicel (no stalks! flowers along the axis) (gladiolus)

Corymb flowers

unbranched, indeterminate inflorescence that is flat topped or convex (boneset)

Examples of compound flowers

Lily of the valley, gladiolus, boneset

Examples of composite flowers

Daisy, sunflower, chrysanthemums, dandelions, gerbera

bilateral (zygomorphic) symmetry

divided by only a single plane into two mirror-image halves (Ex. phalaenopsis orchid)

radial (actinomorphic) symmetry

capable of being divided into equal halves along any diameter

Carl Linnaeus

Swedish botanist who developed a system of classification of organisms (genus + species)

Taxonomy

The scientific work of defining groups of organisms based on shared characteristics

Physical characteristics (shapes of leaves, stature of plant, details of the flowers and other plant organs)

Ability to sexually propagate

Taxonomic classification of plants

Kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species, variety, cultivar

Asexual propagation

Making cuttings and turning those into whole plants; roots formed when cells of stems are exposed to certain hormones

Every propagule is a clone

Tissue culture

Cells or groups of cells are manipulated to grow and form new plant tissue in a vessel that is otherwise sterile

Sexual propagation

uses the organism's male and female parts to grow seed (fertilization)

When does a seed germinate?

When some set of conditions and stimuli are present! Water, temp, etc.

hybridization

breeders use sexual propagation to manipulate the male and female

Gregor Mendel

German monk, schooled at the University of Vienna, studied the genetics of peas (father of modern genetics)

interspecific hybridization

crossing two different species from within the same genus

Why is botanical art so important?

Used to communicate nuances of a plant

Great Temple of Thutmose III at Karnak

275 plants illustrated on the walls of the temple

How would inaccuracies arise during botanical art reproduction?

Copies made by copying from an earlier copy, essential a big game of telephone

Albrecht Durer

Example of how you should be able to see something in real life to draw it accurately; Drew the image of Columbine with leaves that look like poison oak.

What changed in botanical art after the 15th century?

Lack of naturalism changed, more realistic!

Tulipmania

a period in the Dutch Golden Age during which contract prices for bulbs of the recently introduced tulip reached extraordinarily high levels and then suddenly collapsed

Semper Augustus

most expensive bulb sold during the tulip mania

Age of Exploration

Time period during the 15th and 16th centuries when Europeans searched for new sources of wealth and for easier trade routes to China and India. Resulted in the discovery of North and South America by the Europeans.

Illustrators sent to document what they saw with great precision

Revival of botanical art

In 1994, American Society of Botanical Artists was formed

"It takes as much time to learn how to see as it does to learn how to paint"

Pablo Picasso

Florilegium

a collection of literary pieces; anthology (botanical drawings that capture plants of a designated area)

What was the earliest example of botanical art?

Stone frieze in Karnak, Egypt

Book of Hours

book or manuscript containing a calendar, prayers, and biblical passages for private devotion

Leonardo da Vinci

Explosion of botanical art in the age of exploration (15th-17th century)

Maria Sybilla Merian (1647-1717)

A scientific illustrator and an important early entomologist. Recognized in a time where only male botanical artists were recognized.

Banks florilegium

Art was not finished, but copper plates and dried botanicals donated to the museum were completed a lot later

Pierre-Joseph Redoute

Most famous botanical artist of the golden age of botanical art; Famous patrons included Queen Marie Antoinette and Empress Josephine

The Highgrove florilegium

Prince Charles!

Alcatraz florilegium

7 gardens in Alcatraz

Lilies

Have a style, stigma, stamen, filament, tepals (three petals inside and three sepals outside)

Easter lily, Stargazer lily

Is a calla lily a true lily?

No; doesn't have tepals, filaments, or bulbs! Has a spathe and a spadix instead.

Georgia O'Keeffe

American artist that painted flowers and landscapes during the great depression. Painted calla lilies a lot! "Provocative" "Lady of the Lilies"

What comprises production floriculture?

Greenhouse production (bedding plants, potted flowering plants, cut-flowers) and field flower production

What ways can people prevent dropping of flowers?

Sachets that sequester ethylene

What sorts of things should people think about in regards to production floriculture?

Propagation/planting, targeting the sale/harvest date, environmental control, controlling flowering

Easter Lily production

In northern CA, starts as field bulb production (3 years) followed by a vernalization period (in a cooler) and a greenhouse forcing phase where vegetative growth occurs from Dec to 6 weeks before Easter and flowering (which occurs in the last month)

How does marketing drive the production management of the Easter Lily?

You must have the entire crop available two weeks before Easter, must spread out flowering dates of plants over the entire marketing period, need a way to cold-store plants that flower early!

Pros of holiday crops

established market! the work is in getting the crop to fit the market

Cons of holiday crops

missing the market can be disastrous (EX. Easter lilies are worthless after Easter, you can't even give them away)

Describe the production method of potted chrysanthemums

Starts off with a rooted cutting that is potted.