Re: [aroid-l] what does inflorescence mean?

From: MossyTrail at cs.com on 2003.06.05 at 03:25:05(10322) "Petra Schmidt" wrote: >Hi there...Time to buy a good book on botanical terms and my favorite is: ?A >Dictionary of Botany by R. John Little and C. Eugene Jones - they define >inflorescence as: +More >"the arrangement of flowers on a floral axis; a floral cluster" > That is the best explanation of the several. Say you have a foxglove. That long spike with all the flowers on it is the inflorescence. With Agave, I would say that big, tree-like structure is the inflorescence, because an Agave not in flower does not have it. It can get confusing with asters; that is, is each head an inflorescence, or is the whole cluster of heads the inflorescence? Incidentally, isn't it intriguing that the three examples we discussed for largest flower/inflorescence (A. titanum, Rafflesia, Talipot Palm) all live in the same part of the world? Jason Hernandez Naturalist-at-Large

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