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Plant Sexuality · Hydroponics Daily

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  Hi, welcome back to Hydroponics Daily with me, Dr. Russell Sharp,
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  and today we're going to be talking about plant sexuality.
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  And this is all about, this is still about pollination, and plants,
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  some plants have evolved to
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  have male and female plants, and they've done this to prevent inbreeding.
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  Now lots of plants, most plants, have hermaphrodite flowers,
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  and a lot of those allow self-pollination.
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  But in other plants they've evolved to
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  limit or even totally exclude self-pollination
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  as it leads to inbreeding depression now an
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  extreme of this is daecious plants and daecious
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  plants have a completely male and female plants so some seeds
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  grow up to be male once they become mature
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  and some are female and often you can't tell
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  that until they're mature now daecious is
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  latin i think might be
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  greek latin for two houses that's what
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  it means not people lots of people know the term dioecious not
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  many people know that it means two houses so if
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  you had a male plant you would see only anthers
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  in some crops they call these banana flowers
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  or something like that and then in other plants you
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  will see the female flowers and
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  they will have the stigmas and so
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  like hops you only to get the female flowers that
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  are producing the the aromatic compounds from
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  them for example and interestingly i
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  don't think plants exhibit sexual
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  dimorphism where one plant's bigger than
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  the other like in in mammals often
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  and insects the male can be smaller or larger
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  than the female depending on the species in plants i.
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  Think they're roughly the same size so in
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  the british flora the native plants native
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  to britain only four percent of flowering plants are
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  dioecious but if you go to nigeria then.
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  40 percent of the flora are made up of dioecious plants
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  that's a very high proportion and i don't know
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  what it is about nigeria that means that they prevent inbreeding depression
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  but they must need it over in nigeria so as
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  well as we said hops cannabis hemp these are
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  dioecious plants but also willows poplars magnolia
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  magnolia vine which is not a magnolia that's in the schizahandra typhina never
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  heard of it but apparently it's it's dioecious the beautiful silk tassel bush
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  garria elliptica i think that's a lovely plant it reminds me of stripper tassels,
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  the flowers and the flowers i think they come in like late winter so they're
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  always a These lovely tassels appear in late winter and cheer everyone up.
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  Galantheria, hops, as I've said, with the best scientific name ever, Humulus lupulus.
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  Tree of Heaven, although that's considered a weed in a lot of places,
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  Katsura tree, Honey Locust, Sea Bookthorn, a really interesting plant,
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  Sea Bookthorn, especially when it's microbiome.
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  It's a complete tangent, Sea Bookthorn, really interesting fact.
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  Grows near the sea, loads of maritime locations, as well as in the Alps in Switzerland,
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  but nowhere between those to either on the coast or
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  in the alps in switzerland in the center of the continent bizarre plant
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  other plants that are dioecious mulberries ash the
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  fringe tree catinus which is
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  smoke bush i think it's to do with native
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  americans and smokes smoking of it
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  and smoke signals you and the
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  ginkgo biloba ginkgo biloba which
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  is the maidenhair tree from japan and i
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  believe ginkgo has sperm as well as rather
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  than pollen but don't quote me on that and
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  other interesting fact about ginkgo it's the most commonly misspelt
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  scientific name according to google
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  if you do google you find out that everyone spells
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  it gingko and it's actually gingko ginkgo
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  as in go and fuchsia is often
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  spelled incorrectly as well but let's get back to russell slap yourself around
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  the face get back to plant sexuality so we've said hops and hemp you don't want
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  any these are dioces plants where you don't want pollen transfer there is one
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  species one one crop where you do want.
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  Transfer and that's kiwi fruit or as i prefer
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  to call it chinese gooseberry because it's not from new zealand it's
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  got nothing to do with kiwis and there it's a diocese plant that you need pollen
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  transfer for the fruits to set properly and you have lots of female plants and
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  then at the end of the orchard or the plantation you have one or two males some
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  kiwi growers actually just take the male flowers and then.
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  Spray the pollen over the plantation i
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  guess that could be done by drones couldn't it that would be a good horticultural
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  application of drone technology another crop holly
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  holly is a crop as well as a i think in america it's
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  a weed the english holly but it is a crop
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  because it's grown for winter for florists and
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  things like that winter displays it requires it's
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  dioecious and it requires pollen transfer to
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  set seed but they will still produce fruit they're just
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  that the seeds will be sterile so obviously for for
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  displays of holly you you don't need to worry and if you want to birds don't
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  care whether they're eating holly that's got sterile seeds or not so that's
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  an interesting fact going back to ginkgo you actually it's one of the few delicious
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  plants where you want to cultivate the male not the females because the females
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  produce fruit and And when the fruit rots,
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  the smell has been described as rotting flesh. So that's not good.
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  I've tried to produce, I've got ginkgo fruit and I've never experienced this.
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  But apparently in parks, if the fruits allow to decay for too long in too high
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  a number, then they can smell like rotting human flesh.
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  Putrid. Disgusting. So you want to choose a male variety.
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  Same in poplars. you may want to choose a male because they don't produce the
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  seeds that in sort of in gardens they produce these hairy seeds that get in
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  the way and cause issues when when they fall.
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  Chinese yams a very obscure crop that i've actually grown in the past males
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  are always preferred there because you don't divert the resources away from
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  the developing yam in the ground to the flowers and the fruits.
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  And same in asparagus. Males out-yield the females because they're not producing any viable fruit.
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  Some plants are termed monaceous, and that's where they have male flowers and
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  female flowers, but they're on the same plant, often on separate branches.
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  And they may develop at separate times, or they may develop at the same time,
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  and there may be some allowance for self-fertilization, but it just reduces it.
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  So hazels, alders, plains, hornbeams.
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  Beeches, oaks, walnuts, these are all tend
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  to be flowering tree species and wind pollinated
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  tree species so they're often
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  monoecious a lot of these plants produce catkins
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  and the catkins are either seed producing or pollen producing
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  and one of my sons loves to
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  ride on my shoulders pulling the catkins down from the
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  the birch trees and the hazel trees on our
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  walk around our village so when you've
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  got a daeuscious crop you may want to control
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  it and control its sexuality in
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  some way a bit like the certain governments who
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  might want to control people's sexualities so growers
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  can spray plants with like hormones to.
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  Get them to flower earlier so depending on the plant it
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  would depend on the hormone obviously this would have to be legal to
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  do so on your crop and that way
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  you can induce flowering and before you've spent some plants take years
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  to produce flowers so you could be growing a dud
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  male or a dud female so years until you
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  know so you can almost sex them a bit early if you
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  do that and then you might want to control
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  the sexuality you might want to flip them from males to females females
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  to males or you might want to produce hermaphrodites or prevent hermaphrodites
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  and there are a number of ways of doing that that includes both controlling
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  the environment to control and
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  the stresses on the plant and also using synthetic chemicals to control.
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  Sexual production i'll probably use that i'll probably save that for a talk
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  for tomorrow because that's a big talk there's a lot to talk about there's also
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  some safety considerations to consider so that's been hydroponics daily for
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  today plant sexuality and its importance in various horticultural and hydroponic crops.