Do plants start to bloom flowers becasue they are maturing, or growing bigger?

Does growing taller/maturing correlate with more flowers?Do plants start to bloom flowers becasue they are maturing, or growing bigger?
Blooming usually correlates with the season. Tulips bloom in april or may, dahlia in early autumn, for example. The flowers you can buy all times of the year were brought up in green houses where the conditions were changed so the plants were deceived to think it was their blooming season when it wasn't. If a plan't doesn't bloom in its designed season, then it lacks vital compounds, most often phosphor.


On the other hand, a plant needs to be of certain age before it blooms for the first time (this concerns mostly longlife plants like trees, but also some garden flowers like the rose). A fruit tree won't bloom the first few years of its life, how much years depends on the species - a plum tree will start blooming earlier than a peach tree.


So the answer to your qustions is: a plant has to be of certain age to start blooming it its designed season. Meaning: If you plant a tree now, don't expect it to bloom next year because it will be still too young. But if you plant a peach tree now and another one coming November, both will be likely to bloom April 2012 (in the northern hemisphere, and only if your November-planted tree survives) so the one will bloom when it is 5 years old and the other will be 4 1/2, meaning that maturing is important in terms of years but not in terms of months.





Edit: just saw the part about ';more flowers';. It is evidently meaningless for one-year-plants which bllom only once in their lives, and for plants like tulips which only have one flower every year. For other plants, like trees, it means: of course, a bigger tree has more flowers than a small one. But the count of flowers per, say, 30 cm branch will be the same for all trees living under similar conditions (meaning the same soil composition, the same amount and water and the same amount of sunlight). Very young trees are the exception, but after the first two blooming seasons they will have roughly the same amount of flowers.Do plants start to bloom flowers becasue they are maturing, or growing bigger?
Yes, blooming is the sign of maturity. Mature means ready for reproduction.
Many woody plants have a vegetative phase of growth called the juvenile stage in which the plant does not flower. This stage occurs early in the life of a plant. While the plant is juvenile, flowering is prevented by regulatory systems within the plant - it is important to note that a mature plant that is smaller than a juvenile plant will flower and it is the developmental stage and not size that is important. The juvenile phase may last 2-3 years on some flowering shrubs or 5-10 years for some trees. Plants that lack flowering due to juvenility include century plant, crabapple, flowering cherry, Wisteria, and tulip tree.





Some plants do not bloom as expected once they are mature and can be expected to flower. This applies to fruit, landscape, indoor, and garden plants. The cause of failure to bloom is generally related to one or more of the following: plant age (as discussed above), light (day length, see below), and also temperature and other environmental and cultural factors (like shading that can alter the quality of light reaching the plant) can be involved.





Photoperiodism is the ability of plants to measure the length of periods of light. Certain species (short-day plants; chrysanthemums (bloom in the fall), poinsettias, cocklebur ) stop flowering as soon as the day length has passed a critical value, while long-day plants (spinach, Arabidopsis, sugar beets and radish) begin to flower only after such a value has been passed. Photoperiodism is controlled by the photoreceptor phytochrome (http://www.mobot.org/jwcross/duckweed/ph鈥?/a> Still other plants, e.g. the tomato, are day neutral; that is, flowering is not regulated by photoperiod. Plants that are photoperiodic will often flower immediately after maturity if the daylength is correct to induce the flowing response.





Since flowering involves the conversion of meristems from vegetative to floral, the greater the number of meristems on a plant, the greater number of floral meristems that can develop.