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:
“As the twentieth century ends, commerce and culture are coming closer together. The distinction between life and art has been eroded by fifty years of enhanced communications, ever-improving reproduction technologies and increasing wealth.”
—Stephen Bayley (b. 1951)
“A person of mature years and ripe development, who is expecting nothing from literature but the corroboration and renewal of past ideas, may find satisfaction in a lucidity so complete as to occasion no imaginative excitement, but young and ambitious students are not content with it. They seek the excitement because they are capable of the growth that it accompanies.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)