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#monocarpy
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Photo of the base of a rainforest tree and its massive buttress roots.
Aerial photo of a single, dead, leafless tree surrounded by green, living trees.
Here’s a monocarpic rainforest legume tree. This is Tachigali versicolor, which has a spectacular buttressed trunk. After reproducing (& producing wind-dispersed fruits), the whole tree dies. Both photos by Reinaldo Aguilar CCBYNCSA2 #Fabaceae #monocarpy #Botany 🌾🧪🌱
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A collage of two photos. The left panel shows a many-branched tree silhouetted against the sky. The right panel shows a dead, leafless tree against the sky.
Monocarpy is super rare among broadleaf trees (& absent from Gymnosperms). Cerberiopsis candelabra comes from New Caledonia. It’s a monocarpic forest tree! 📷: Florence Le Strat CCBYNC4 #Apocynaceae #monocarpy #Botany 🌾🧪🌱
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A collage of two photos. Both show a solitary, bipinnate fishtail palm with infructescences at various stages of development. The oldest infructescence is at the top of the trunk.
Caryota urens does a slow version of monocarpy. Flowering begins at the stem apex (preventing further veg growth) & proceeds down the stem. It can take months. It can have fruits at the top of the trunk & flowers near the ground. 📷: Forest & Kim Starr CCBY2 #Arecaceae #monocarpy #Botany 🌾🧪🌱
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Photo of a single, pinnate-leaf palm with a huge, branched terminal inflorescence. Photo by Scott Zona CCBYNC2.
Monocarpy evolved several times in the palm family. Here it is in Metroxylon vitiense. Surprisingly, M. sagu (sago palm) produces offsets before dying like some agaves (not monocarpic); M. amicarum flowers year after year w/o dying (pleonanthy = iteroparity). #Arecaceae #monocarpy #Botany 🌾🧪🌱
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Photo of a group of massive fan palms. One has an enormous terminal, branched infructescence. Another standing trunk is dead and leafless. Photo by Scott Zona CCBYNC2.
If it’s massive monocarpy you’re looking for, you’ll find it in Corypha. This is C. umbraculifera. It produces the largest inflorescence in the Plant Kingdom (ca. 8 m tall) and the most flowers (ca. 24 million/inflorescence). Big bang doesn’t get any bigger. #Arecaceae #monocarpy #Botany 🌾🧪🌱
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Photo of a barren, brown hillside and a scattering of massive rosette bromeliads with enormous terminal inflorescences. The plant in the foreground is brown and dead with a blackened inflorescence.
You could not ask for a more spectacular example of a monocarpic bromeliad than the magnificent Puya raimondii of Peru & Bolivia. Note the dead individual standing in the front. 📷: Dabalché CCBYNCSA2. #Bromeliaceae #monocarpy #Botany 🌾🧪🌱
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A collage of two photos. The left panel shows an epiphytic tillandsia with a terminal inflorescence (Jenny Evans CC BY-NC 2.0). The right panel shows a dead, brown epiphytic rosette and a dead, dried infructescence (Josh Emm CC BY-NC 4.0).
Many bromeliads do what agaves do: The rosette flowers & dies, but offsets survive. Some, however, don’t make offsets & are monocarpic. Most Tillandsia spp proliferate via offsets, but T. utriculata does not. It is monocarpic & reproduces only by seeds. #Bromeliaceae #monocarpy #Botany 🌾🧪🌱
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A collage of two photos. The left panel shows two agaves producing massive, terminal inflorescences with dense white flowers. The tip of the inflorescence is limp and arching. The right panel shows another agave with a similar inflorescence of white flowers. Photos by Scott Zona CCBYNC2
Agaves are known for their big bang reproduction: They grow for several years, flower spectacularly & die. Most botanists say that agaves that make vegetative offsets are not truly monocarpic. One rosette dies, but the plant survives. 📷: Agave attenuata. #Asparagaceae #monocarpy #Botany 🌾🧪🌱
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A collage of two photos: The left panel shows bamboo with plentiful foliage. The right panel shows the same bamboo with very sparse foliage and leafless culms. Photos by Scott Zona CCBYNC2.
Who hasn’t heard of monocarpy among bamboos? Responding to unknown environmental cues, all the stems in the stand flower. In Duke Gardens in late 2023, Phyllostachys nigra ‘Bori’ flowered & slowly (over many months) died. #Poaceae #monocarpy #Botany 🌾🧪🌱
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Annuals & biennials reproduce & then die, but that same reproductive strategy is sometimes found in long-lived perennials. Reproduction can be all at once (big bang) or last several years ending in death. Either way, we call it monocarpy (= semelparity in animals). #monocarpy #Botany 🌾🧪🌱
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