Monocarpic---a valid term for bulbs ???

[Jim McKenney]

EDIT by Maggi: I have moved these posts because I believe this discussion merits a thread of its own 

It defintely looks like Notholirion thomsonianum.
Like all Notholirions it is monocarp. You should save seed and when it dies down you should look for side bulbils at the base. These need separating and growing on.
It is themost western species and not so much a woodlander as the other ones.
Good luck with it.     
Göte

I think we should take a look at this concept monocarpic. Most older books describe Notholirion and  Cardiocrinum as monocarpic. I say that that is a mistake. These plants are no more or less monocarpic than tulips, fritillaries and so many other bulbs.

I suspect confusion arises here because of uncertainty about just what it is which is described by the term monocarpic. I think the term monocarpic should be used to describe a taxon and definitely not used to describe a part of a plant (for instance, the flower or bulb).

It is the nature of most bulb taxa to form clonal aggregations. It is also the nature of bulbs (the structure, not the taxon) to disappear ( “die” or become subsumed into the surviving basal plate) after blooming. The tulip bulbs one digs in July are not the ones one planted in November.

In the case of all bulbs, the part which persists from year to year is the basal plate; this is the true perennial stem of the bulbous plant (to be distinguished from the annual stem which rises out of the ground to bear the flower and seed).

Plants such as Cardiocrinum and Notholirion do not die after blooming  as a rule: new bulbs form on the basal plate to continue the life of the original plant.

As examples of truly monocarpic plants, I would cite (keeping in mind that in nature little if anything is a sure thing) Echium vulgare or Campanula thyrsoides.

Can anyone cite a bulbous taxon which is truly monocarpic?

[gote]

This is a semantic question. To call them monocarp is common usage among those reasonably knowledgable.
A Tulipa does not need several years of build up again after flowering. What word should we use for those that behave like Notholirion, Agave Fourcreua and Cardiocrium ?
The Notholirions I have been growing were definitely monocarp. There were zero bulbils at the base.
There seems to exist annual Bulbinellas but then we might get into semantics on what a bulbous subject is.
Fourcreua dies after flowering without any sidebulbs from the basal plate but a number of bulbils form in the inflorescense. Does this make it a perennial?
Göte.
PS
I am not aware that I have called a flower monocarp meaning the flower as such. However like most people I sometimes say flower when I mean the plant.

[Lesley Cox]

But because a bulb (Notholirion) died after flowering without forming new bulbils at the base, doesn't mean it's monocarpic. Maybe it just died and conditions prior to that event could have prevented it from forming new bulbils. I lose many plants after they flower, including some bulbs. That doesn't make them monocarpic, unles it is that plant's natural and inevitable habit to die after flowering, in every instance.

[Jim McKenney]

Exactly, Göte , it’s a semantic question. But wouldn’t you agree that semantic questions sometimes help clarify otherwise muddled issues? Who better than we to address it and help clarify it? We are the ones who know and grow the plants – we are the ones who know what is really happening.

I think this is worth pursing, if only because words should mean what they say, so-to-speak. There are plenty of examples in life where this is not the case, and that’s when thinking people (like you)  should step up and help straighten things out. Like you, I frequently say “flower” when I mean plant, or say “bulb” when the subject in question is a corm or something else. And I think this is perfectly acceptable usage in many contexts.

But there are times when we want to be precise, and there are some of us who bristle at the idea of using a pompous word when the idea in question can be expressed in plain language unambiguously. Part of the problem with this word “monocarpic” is that not only is its meaning obscure to most non-botanists, but even among botanists the word is sometimes used carelessly. How many professional horticulturists and botanists have repeated over the years the fallacy that Cardiocrinum is monocarpic? 

If I plant an acorn, allow it to grow and mature to blooming age, and then cut it down after it has bloomed, does that make it monocarpic? Of course not. If plants difficult in cultivation die after blooming, is that necessarily characteristic of the same plant in nature? Of course not. (While typing this, Leslie beat me to the punch here…)

The main problem I have with calling the plants in question monocarpic is that to do so makes the word monocarpic meaningless. ALL flowers (blossoms) fruit once only, if at all. If one were considering the flower (blossom) only, then some would argue that any plant might properly be called monocarpic. But to do so would remove any particular meaning from the term: if every entity in question is monocarpic, then what additional information is conveyed by saying that they are monocarpic?

It seems to me that “bulb” and “monocarpic” are incompatible concepts: “monocarpic bulb” is an oxymoron, and I would further state an oxymoron without any real world examples.  It’s apparently true that some individual plants of Cardiocrinum and Notholirion do die without leaving offsets. But isn’t this more a reflection of the vigor of that particular plant than characteristic of most members of the same species?

This is the criterion I would use in deciding if a plant should be called monocarpic: if the majority of plants of that species die after setting seed without leaving vegetative reproduction, then the taxon is properly monocarpic.

Göte, you pointed out that tulips do not need several years to rebuild and bloom again after flowering. That’s true, but a tulip does need many years after germinating from seed to do so. It is during those early years that the life cycle of the tulip is comparable to that of Cardiocrinum and Notholirion such as N. thomsonianum. And for the same reasons, a Cardiocrinum offset is comparable to a tulip seedling of several years’ growth: it needs additional years before it blooms.

I urge everyone to give consideration to the role of the basal plate/perennial stem in these plants: it makes so many aspects of their life cycle so much easier to understand, and it helps to clarify our often muddled concepts about the nature of bulbs, corms and so on. 

[gote]

"I would first rectify the names" said the master (Kung Futze)

You take up a couple of subjects here but unfortunately you do not answer my question: What word to use instead? Nor wether you consider Fourcreua to be a perennial.

I checked with the literature I have available here and I find that the RHS dictionary as well as RHS Plants A to Z both call Notholirion and Cardiocrinum monocarp. This is obviously general usage when there is a need for brevity and brevity was my reason for using the word.
Many linguists would claim that usage defines the meaning. I use the word as meaning that the main plant dies after flowering.  I am aware that there is a gray zone there. The Genera Digitalis and Meconopsis are hovering on the brink. In some strains of Meconopsis betonicifolia it is a toss up wether the plant will survive the first flowering or not. The determining factor seems to be wether the plant formed a side shoot in the year before the first flowering or not. The formation of a flowering shoot seems to prevent the formation of side shoots.

Notholirion and Cardiocrinum differ from their close relatives Lilium Nomocharis and Fritillaria by that the main bulb dies down completely after flowering but leaves daughter bulbs. These seem to form outside the main bulb not inside as in Lilium and the others. This has by some been considered a clue to how the lilies (in the wide meaning of the word) have developed. Acc to 'Lilies of the world' Notholirion forms the bulbils a year before flowering.   

Now there are two schools as to usage of words.
#A:Those who classify some words as "pompous" and do not believe that the interested reader or listener can understand them.
#B: Those who believe that the public is intelligent and well informed enough to know or, failing knowledge at the moment, to learn.
I definitely belong to the latter school. I hold a high opinion about my fellow man. I think that one should use the best words that are available. To avoid using certain words is to kill them and to deplete the language - in my eyes a sin but many journalists seem to think that it be a virtue. 

I do not think that a sexually produced Tulip seedling is  comparable to an asexually produced bulbil. The point is that the tulip main bulb, inside and after formation of a flowering shoot, forms a new bulb as strong as the old one.

I certainly agree to that one should pay attention to the metamorphoses of plant parts. However, it leads us to problems sometimes. The true leaves of Trilliums seem to be the cataphylls that stay underground whereas the greenery on the thing that emerges from the soil seems to be bracts. Nevertheless i think mos of us call it leaves. Half of the six colourful protuberances that make up a lily flower are not petals so many use the word tepal instead.

With the best regards from
your bristlingly pompous friend
Göte

PS
I forgot to put  when referring to my bad results with Notholirion. I do not believe that oaks are monocarp. 

[Jim McKenney]

Göte, please, I used the word bristle to refer to myself, and I used the word pompous to refer to a word, not a person. The world I live in is noisy with pompous words; and in order to get by and function in that world, I use pompous words, too.  I don’t consider myself to be pompous for doing so, and I certainly did not mean to imply that you or any other person deserved that description for so doing. If I misled you to think otherwise, please accept my apology.


You wrote “Fourcreua dies after flowering without any sidebulbs from the basal plate but a number of bulbils form in the inflorescence. Does this make it a perennial?” This confused me at first: the word looked like Fouquieria, but that didn't make much sense in terms of this discussion. Then I realized you meant the agave relative Furcraea; that is what you meant, isn't it? If, as you say, it forms little somethings (which are not seeds)  in the inflorescence which go on to produce new plants, then yes, it is a perennial.  Compare what happens in the common tiger lily: there are bulbils in the leaf axils which vegetatively propagate the plant. No one disputes that the tiger lily is perennial.

You ask what word should be used to describe the plants in question. They are simply perennial flowering plants: one of the points I am trying to make is that the only peculiar thing about their life cycle is that they do not flower every year. Otherwise, what happens in Cardiocrinum (which as you note is almost universally described as being monocarpic) is little different than what happens in a garden tulip (which I have never seen described as monocarpic). 

The illusion that Cardiocrinum is monocarpic arises from a misunderstanding of the life cycle of the plant, a misunderstanding of the anatomy of the plant.

The Cardiocrinum in my garden have been through three blooming cycles. I started with one bulb. The plants I have now are pieces of the seedling which germinated who knows how many years ago and grew into that first bulb I obtained. They are a clone, a clone which has been in my garden for a decade. They are undoubtedly perennial.

Did my first Cardiocrinum  “die” after it bloomed? Do my tulips “die” after they bloom? The answer in both cases is NO. The plant persists as a perennial. To be sure, in both cases, the bulbs I see now are not the bulbs I planted: the only part of the bulbs I planted which survives is part of the basal plate/perennial stem. 

With respect to your “two schools as to usage of words”, I would place myself in both schools as the circumstances demand. I am not an unintelligent person, and I can fairly describe myself as someone very interested in words, yet I sometimes encounter words which I do not understand, words which, frankly, make no sense to me. These are, typically, words which are being used incorrectly or words being used to hide something.

For instance, if you go to your psychiatrist and tell him "I'm afraid of spiders", he might then tell you that you suffer from arachnophobia. All he has done is to translate your English into medical neo-Greek. This in turn gives the patient the impression that there is something more to this arachnophobia than a simple fear of spiders. There is more: a big fat bill for having done nothing productive. Very many people are easily cowed by this sort of thing.   

Trusting the public to learn strikes me as a dubious proposition. There was a time, a long time, when people believed that whales were fish and that the world was flat. These beliefs were held by persons who were neither unintelligent nor poorly informed. They knew as much as their circumstances allowed. How often have you heard someone call a spider an insect, or a rabbit a rodent, or a swift a swallow?

Is our role in life to point them in the right direction, or is it right to stand back and snicker at their ignorance? It seems to me that we all benefit when ambiguities are challenged. There is nothing new or unusual about “the authorities” being wrong. 

A well- informed and intelligent public is a thing much to be desired; but I think you will admit that the extent to which this is realized varies enormously from place to place. I  hold the potential of  my fellow man in high opinion; but it is hard not to observe frequent failures to attain that potential. People like big words, in particular big words which other people do not understand. That they themselves do or do not understand the words is irrelevant.

Göte, when you write “I think that one should use the best words that are available. To avoid using certain words is to kill them and to deplete the language”  I could not agree more. I’m not trying to avoid the use of the word monocarpic: I’m urging people to use it accurately. 

[gote]

No apology needed (from your side). I could not resist making the wrong inference thereby poking you a little.

I would never claim that Lilium lancifolium is no perennial – but this is because the main bulb survives until the next year – just as it (hopefully) does on lilies that normally have no bulbils.

As I see it, the question boils down to the definition of a plant. I find it impractical to call a clone a plant. If I strike two cuttings from the same shrub, they grow into two specimen in different parts of the garden and I kill one of them, I say that I killed that shrub. I do not say that it is alive because the other shrub is not killed.

I also think that this leads to strange results if we apply your reasoning to other areas. Consider identical twins! And apomictic annuals. 

Obviously the general public HAS learnt since most of them no longer believe that the earth is flat. I agree that most of the general public would not know nor care to learn what the word ‘monocarp’ means but those who read this forum are not the general public. They have a special area of interest and I believe that 99% would know or want to learn.
By the way I find it natural that people call a rabbit a rodent since they actually WERE classed in Rodentia earlier.

We all use Latin names for our plants. Not because we want to show off our knowledge but because this enables us to communicate in a meaningful way. The Doctors I know (Why is everybody using the word Doctor for MDs? There are many kinds of doctors), use technical terms to those they believe will understand and try to express themselves simply when talking to the uninitiated.

Someone with Arachnophobia is not afraid of spiders. He is pathologically afraid and probably has a syndrome of various symptoms that makes it meaningful to use a more exact word. Physicians use neogreek or latin words for the same reasons as we do. I.e. in order to signify a more narrow and better defined meaning than the vernacular allows. Also in order to be better understood internationally. How many of your non-native-english-speaking readers know what a swift is?
 
Authorities are surprisingly often wrong about facts but the definition of a word cannot be wrong. The meanings of words are definitions that we assign to them by fiat. If most botanists call Cardiocrinum monocarp (or hapaxant) this is what they are. Sometimes the words may be misleading and I agree that this is not a good thing. However I do not think that this applies here. The word adequately describes the lifecycle of that genus. That they may survive as side bulbs is added information of in my view somewhat lesser significance.

I do not think that we are likely to agree on this but it is an interesting discussion.
Have anice weekend
Göte

[Jim McKenney]

Göte,  I just typed out a two page response to your last posting, and then a little voice whispered to me “Jim, you’re going to put them to sleep; you and Göte obviously do not speak the same philosophical language.”

With that in mind, let me try a different approach. If Cardiocrinum is monotypic, please explain to me why Tulipa is not. 

[Maggi Young]

Sleep? That's the last thing  I'll do ..... keep it up, please, great to have a wordy thread 

[rob krejzl]

Surely haxapanth?

[Jim McKenney]

No, Rob, it's hapaxanth in English, hapaxant in some other languages.

It's from the classical Greek adverb απαξ (I have not figured out how to do the rough breathing sign) which means once + the neo-Latin combining form  anth- for flower.  

The only other place I've encountered this is in the term hapax legomenon. Does anyone cite other uses in English?

[annew]

This is a very satisfying discussion, keep it going, my friends!

[Gerry Webster]

As I see it, the question boils down to the definition of a plant. I find it impractical to call a clone a plant. If I strike two cuttings from the same shrub, they grow into two specimen in different parts of the garden and I kill one of them, I say that I killed that shrub. I do not say that it is alive because the other shrub is not killed.

Some definitions are both imprecise & context dependent. I recall an article some years ago in the RHS Journal (I think) on the largest plant in the world. The answer was one of the common daffodil cultivars, either 'King Alfred' or 'Carlton' (can't remember which). In this context both the question & the answer (if correct) make perfect sense. In the case of your example, Gote, it is reasonable to say that one plant no longer exists.

Authorities are surprisingly often wrong about facts but the definition of a word cannot be wrong. The meanings of words are definitions that we assign to them by fiat. If most botanists call Cardiocrinum monocarp (or hapaxant) this is what they are.

Agreed that definitions cannot be wrong but  the application/use of a term (if it has an unambiguous definition) can be. The flowers of anemones are not zygomorphic & no amount of discussion or argument can make them so.
These questions are essentially philosophical not empirical. By the way,  I know nothing about Cardiocrinum!

[Jim McKenney]

Thanks, Gerry. In the two-page post I decided not to send, I used exactly that example of the largest plant. As I recall, it was the daffodil Carlton at that time.

[annew]

Weird! I was just looking at that article yesterday while going through my back copies - it was indeed 'Carlton'.