Flowers of a South African succulent plant predict tomorrow’s weather, synchronizing flower opening with pollinator activity

1. Day-to-day synchrony between flower opening and pollinator activity is important for maximizing plant fitness. A succulent, Bulbine frutescens (L.) Willd., is an ideal model for studying synchrony in response to daily weather as it flowers year-round. Additionally, it has self-incompatible flowers that open for just one day, making it essential that flower opening matches pollinator activity.
2. Observations were made on urban plants in California, USA, with validation measurements in the native range in South Africa. Independent observations indicated that flowers open primarily after favorable conditions the previous day, specifically air temperatures above 15°C. Solar radiation was experimentally shown to have limited, but significant effects. Pollinators, mostly bee species, had similar temperature thresholds to flowers.
3. Developmental constraints on flowers were hypothesized to delay opening by a day. Flower bud growth was closely related to temperature, with warm days resulti..., Data were acquired through field observations, long-term monitoring of multiple populations of bulbine, as fully described in the methods for the published article in Functional Ecology. Each data file represents a different analysis or data used to create a figure. Each file contains initial rows that describe the dataset and nature of data in each column, followed by a row of column headings and then the data., Files are stored as spreadsheets in open-source comma separated \".csv\" format, and can be opened by a broad range of software, including Excel.Â