Reproduction and Growth
Roystonea regia produces unisexual flowers that are pollinated by animals. European honey bees and bats are reported pollinators. Seeds are dispersed by birds and bats that feed upon the fruit.
Seed germination is adjacent ligular—during germination, as the cotyledon expands it only pushes a portion of the embryo out of the seed. As a result, the seedling develops adjacent to the seed. The embryo forms a ligule, and the plumule protrudes from this. Seedlings in cultivation are reported to begin producing a stem two years after germination, at the point where they produce their thirteenth leaf. Growth rates of seedlings averaged 4.2 cm (1.7 in) per year in Florida.
Read more about this topic: Roystonea Regia
Famous quotes containing the words reproduction and/or growth:
“Although Samuel had a depraved imagination—perhaps even because of this—love, for him, was less a matter of the senses than of the intellect. It was, above all, admiration and appetite for beauty; he considered reproduction a flaw of love, and pregnancy a form of insanity. He wrote on one occasion: “Angels are hermaphrodite and sterile.””
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
“Every child has an inner timetable for growth—a pattern unique to him. . . . Growth is not steady, forward, upward progression. It is instead a switchback trail; three steps forward, two back, one around the bushes, and a few simply standing, before another forward leap.”
—Dorothy Corkville Briggs (20th century)