Plietesials are

plant Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all current definitions of Plantae exclud ...

s that grow for a number of years,

flower A flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive structure found in flowering plants (plants of the division Angiospermae). The biological function of a flower is to facilitate reproduction, usually by providing a mechani ...

gregariously (synchronously), set

seed A seed is an embryonic plant enclosed in a protective outer covering, along with a food reserve. The formation of the seed is a part of the process of reproduction in seed plants, the spermatophytes, including the gymnosperm and angiospe ...

and then die. The length of the cycle can vary between 8 and 16 years. For example, the neelakurinji plant flowers every 12 years and bloomed as expected in 2006 and 2018 in the

Munnar Munnar () is a town and hill station in the Idukki district of the southwestern Indian state of Kerala. Munnar is situated at around above mean sea level, in the Western Ghats mountain range. Munnar is also called the "Kashmir of South Indi ...

region of

Kerala Kerala ( ; ) is a state on the Malabar Coast of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, following the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, by combining Malayalam-speaking regions of the erstwhile regions of Cochin, Malabar, South ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

. Certain species of unrelated families of flowering plants (including Poaceae, Arecaceae, Scrophulariaceae, Fabaceae, Apocynaceae, and Acanthaceae) are plietesial. The term plietesial has been used in reference to perennial monocarpic plants "of the kind most often met with in the Strobilanthinae" (a subtribe of Acanthaceae containing Strobilanthes and allied genera) that usually grow gregariously, flower simultaneously following a long interval, set seed, and die. Other commonly used expressions or terms describing a plietesial life history include gregarious flowering, mast seeding, and supra-annual synchronized

semelparity Semelparity and iteroparity are two contrasting reproductive strategies available to living organisms. A species is considered semelparous if it is characterized by a single reproductive episode before death, and iteroparous if it is characteri ...

(semelparity =

monocarpy Monocarpic plants are those that flower and set seeds only once, and then die. The term is derived from Greek (''mono'', "single" + ''karpos'', "fruit" or "grain"), and was first used by Alphonse de Candolle. Other terms with the same meaning are ...

).Daniel, Thomas F. 2006
Synchronous Flowering and Monocarpy Suggest Plietesial Life History forNeotropical Stenostephanus chiapensis(Acanthaceae).
PROCEEDINGS OF THE CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. Fourth Series. Volume 57, No. 38, pp. 1011–1018, 1 fig. December 28, 2006 It is not clear why gregarious flowering after long vegetative intervals would be associated with death after flowering, although both are associated with higher reproductive outputs.

Description

A good description of this natural history aspect of a plant's life cycle can be found in the following report:

References

* Daniel, Thomas F. 2006
Synchronous flowering and monocarpy suggest plietesial life history for neotropical ''Stenostephanus chiapensis'' (Acanthaceae).
PROCEEDINGS OF THE CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. Fourth Series. Volume 57, No. 38, pp. 1011–1018, 1 fig. December 28, 2006 Plant life-forms Plant reproduction Fertility {{Botany-stub

Description

See also

References