Pelargonium cucullatum old flowers internalising activity

When the nearly countless petals disappear from the flowered Pelargonium cucullatum bush, the spectacular stage is over. It was a metabolically demanding one, but the one to follow is equally so, or more. Its main actions are behind the scenes though. Neither sugar has to be produced for nectar, nor pollen for the anthers. Petals and stamens are history for a year, as far as supply obligations are concerned. Yesterday’s necessities become today’s expendable luxuries.

New priorities drive the plant now, following the seduction of pollinators. This involves the production of new cells for fruits, growing awns for the fruit bodies, starch for growing seeds bodies, and proteins for developing the embryos. Vital decisions are triggered in the plant by interlocking internal signals and external cues, not by board room decisions, the way people would conduct such a project. It is like when pollen tubes reach ovules, the developing embryos begin to produce the appropriate hormones.

Other processes are driven by different hormones, the developmental complexity all focussed on the goal of seed production. Sacrifices in other functions, like leaf wellbeing allows them to drop off, whereby the burden on the busy organism is lightened. There is also the drying out of the fruits, dividing them into five mericarps with intricate design for corkscrewing into the ground when the time comes, after separation from the plant.

It is not only the human brain that deals with complexity. The universe and the smaller world of the living have done all this at the highest level imaginable for a very long time (https://www.aarf.asia; https://www.internationalscholarsjournals.com; https://link.springer.com).