Latest / Hydroponics Daily / Monocarpic vs Polycarpic Plants - What are they and why are they important in Hydroponics

Transcript

Monocarpic vs Polycarpic Plants - What are they and why are they important in Hydroponics · Hydroponics Daily

• 0:00
  Hi, welcome back to Hydroponics Daily. Today I thought we would cover a term
• 0:05
  that is not that well known, but it's quite interesting, and that's monocarpic
• 0:09
  versus polycarpic plants.
• 0:12
  Mono means one, and poly means many.
• 0:16
  Carp means fruit. So one fruit, one fruiting, many fruiting.
• 0:22
  And so this determines whether a plant dies after it flowers and fruits.
• 0:27
  So cereal crops like wheat, they
• 0:30
  die off in the field as they once they flowered and
• 0:33
  fruited and you harvest them in a desiccated form
• 0:36
  that the dry plants you don't see a green cereal
• 0:39
  crop when you're harvesting it but there are and things
• 0:43
  like weeds like arabidopsis the model
• 0:46
  plant species that dies after it's flowered and that can
• 0:49
  that can happen after maybe six weeks so it's got a
• 0:51
  life cycle it's dead in six weeks so in
• 0:54
  lettuce lettuce once it's flowered and fruited we call
• 0:57
  that bolting in things like cabbages and lettuce those rosette
• 1:00
  forming plants once they've bolted and they've
• 1:03
  seeded they die off but it's not
• 1:06
  just annual plants that are monocarpic the himalayan
• 1:09
  lily is a plant that lives for many years produces amazing like eight foot beautiful
• 1:16
  white flowers and then dies the same for the sort of the himalayan poppies that
• 1:24
  they're grown in tibet to the mechanopsis,
• 1:26
  the bright, brilliant blue colours.
• 1:29
  You get yellow ones as well. The Welsh poppy, I think, is a mechanopsis.
• 1:33
  They die after flowering. Normal poppies die after flowering.
• 1:37
  But the Himalayan poppy is unusual because it's a perennial that dies after flowering.
• 1:41
  It just sits there in your garden for a number of years, and then one year,
• 1:45
  it flowers. Amazing. Then dies.
• 1:48
  Some bamboo species, not all bamboos, some 60 years, and then they all flower and fruit at once,
• 1:54
  and then they die and they thought they might they do that to
• 1:57
  prevent from like rodents from
• 2:01
  eating all the seeds because the rats come in they try and
• 2:03
  eat all the bamboo seeds and they can't because they've all flowered and
• 2:06
  fruited at the same time it doesn't allow the rodent population to increase
• 2:10
  to the point where they all die this is important if you've got a plant and
• 2:14
  you're trying to keep it alive after it's flowered and fruited it's not going
• 2:17
  to happen so make sure you know whether your plant is polycarpic or monocarpic
• 2:21
  obviously obvious examples of polycarbic plants include wasabi,
• 2:25
  which is a particular favourite of mine to grow hydroponically.
• 2:28
  Plum, obviously that doesn't die after it flowers and fruits,
• 2:31
  so it lives for many years.
• 2:33
  Hops, they come back every year, although you might think they're dead because the top,
• 2:40
  tissue above the ground dies off. They're called a herbaceous perennial.
• 2:44
  The tops die off, but underneath they survive.
• 2:47
  Same with a potato or a begonia, they would be classed as herbaceous perennials.
• 2:53
  And rhododendron, it's a shrub that flowers, it fruits, and then it flowers again the next year.
• 2:58
  So polycarpic, monocarpic, there's got some uses in hydroponics.
• 3:03
  Don't try and force a monocarpic to be a polycarpic.
• 3:06
  That's the Hydroponics Daily for today. Thank you.