Talk:Monocarpy

I have added to the lead that regular cutting can keep a hogweed from ever flowering. The source is clear that cutting rosettes “extends their life span by postponing the time of flowering” (Pyšek et al. 2007, p. 123). Renew the postponement every summer and the flowering never comes. No digging, no spraying: patient mowing, and the flowering is put off for good. — Ed. Bernstein (talk) 16:46, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

Oppose. Postponed is not prevented. The manual says what the plant does under stress: it postpones flowering “until a time when sufficient reserves are stored” (Nielsen et al. 2005, p. 17). The oldest plant on record waited twelve years on a dry, unmanaged site, and then flowered (Pergl et al. 2006). Every summer you mow, you are mowing a plant that is alive at the root, and vegetative plants “can only be killed by cutting the root” (Pyšek et al. 2007, p. 123). — Rosa L. (talk) 16:52, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

Then leave the timing to the plant. By the article’s own sources the “decision” when to flower is a trade-off against “the profit from delayed reproduction” (Pergl et al. 2006). The plant knows its own business. — InvisibleHand (talk) 16:55, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

It does. Output was unrelated to age: the authors read it as a “threshold in the amount of resources” (Pergl et al. 2006, p. 1025), and the manual explains cutting as working by depleting those reserves (Nielsen et al. 2005, pp. 30, 32). Mowing does not abolish the threshold; it makes the plant take longer to reach it. When it gets there, the reserves are “suddenly available for rapid utilization” (Pyšek et al. 2007, p. 307). — Moor (talk) 17:01, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

For the record: I could find no study that measured, year by year, how long repeated cutting holds a hogweed back. Where cutting has been kept up on other monocarps, the record is not encouraging. In Mizoram, where farmers kept cutting the regrowing bamboo culms, the rhizomes still flowered and the fruit littered the ground (Aplin & Lalsiamliana 2010, p. 30). In Ceylon, talipots whose young leaves were cut for umbrellas could take twenty years or more to form a stem (Seifriz 1924, p. 347), which is a delay, not an exemption. — Kingfisher (talk) 17:06, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

Then may we at least say “for many years”? — Ed. Bernstein (talk) 17:10, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

For exactly as many years as the root is left alive. That is not a solution. It is a schedule. — Old Mole (talk) 17:12, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

Closing. The lead says “postpones”, as the source does; see Size, stress and cutting and Hydra effect. — Catchment Committee (talk) 17:27, 26 September 2026 (UTC)