Cost of fruiting, size regulation, and senescence in a long-lived geophyte
James D. Thomson, David F. Andrews, Juan Carlos Suárez Salazar, Juan Carlos Suárez Salazar, Juan Carlos Suárez Salazar · 2026
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Description
The authors report a thirty-three-year study of a long-lived mountain lily and what fruiting costs it, in a 2026 paper. Plants of Erythronium grandiflorum grew in a transplant garden shielded from pocket gophers. Each year the team dug up the dormant bulbs, photographed them, and weighed them, following individuals from seed to old age.
Plants took five to six years to reach flowering size, then held their size steady by splitting or by fruiting. Making one fruit cost a plant about eight percent of the weight it would otherwise have gained. Death was rare: a few plants faded in a way that looked like true aging, while others died suddenly from fungal infection after growing strongly. More years are needed, the authors say, to settle the aging question.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | James D. Thomson, David F. Andrews, Juan Carlos Suárez Salazar, Juan Carlos Suárez Salazar, Juan Carlos Suárez Salazar |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 53 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |