What triggers the flowering of durians?

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| Photograph Credit score: KSL

Primarily based on observations of 110 durian vegetation, researchers have found that round 15 days of dry climate can set off the flowering of durian vegetation. The flowering occurred round 50 days after an roughly 15-day dry spell, impartial of whether or not the plant was grafted or grown from a seed.

The examine lined each seed-grown and grafted vegetation, and centered on the timing at which particular person vegetation flowered, measured in opposition to an in depth survey of climate circumstances. The workforce discovered that durian vegetation flowered roughly 50 days after a protracted interval of dry climate. These dry spells wanted to be lengthy sufficient to point out up in shifting common traces, particularly intervals the place rainfall averaged over 15-day home windows was lower than 1 mm.

Earlier work had hinted at some correlation between both dryness or low temperature. That is the primary time that the precise circumstances had been pinned down with such accuracy, although they discovered no correlation with most or minimal temperature. They proposed that there was some relationship between the flowering of durian and the extra normal burst of flowering seen within the tropics following lengthy dry spells. However such normal flowering occasions require an extended dry spell of round 30 days to happen.

This explains why durians are inclined to flower a number of instances a yr, whereas synchronised flowering throughout species happens as soon as each few years.