Tropicals & Tender Perennials: Good News!, 1 by ExoticRainforest

ExoticRainforest wrote:
Tropic, you are fortunate you can see this happening naturally.

The process is known as ontogeny. That big word simply means the natural aging of any living organism.

As a child ages, it changes. As any animal ages, it changes, it is just a natural process. There are actually two processes that go on with plants, the first being natural ontogeny and the second being natural variation within species. Since I would eat up a ton of space here trying to explain it, and I know for certain many people would not be interested, I'd like to just give you a link:

http://www.exoticrainforest.com/Natural variation within aro...

As you will see on the page many aroids can take on totally different "faces" as they age and the leaves of a species do not always look alike. When we last updated this article some months ago I used one of Dave's photos above to illustrate this point by comparing the juvenile form most of us grow of Epipremnum pinnatum to the adult leaf he shows. Sometimes they are so radically different most of us would not recognize them as the same species.

I had a of of help writing that page and it has been reviewed by scientists that know far more than I do. You'll find lots of photos and we do our best to keep it simple. If I loose you somewhere I'll be glad to try to answer the questions but all of this is quite simple.

We grow, we age and eventually we vanish as an individual. Plants do the same thing.

Steve



This message was edited Jul 3, 2010 8:09 AM

This message was edited Jul 3, 2010 8:14 AM