Abstract
The tiny red flowers of Kalanchoë blossfeldiana open and close at 23-hour intervals. They do this for a week even when plucked from the plant and placed in a vial of sugar water under constant green light, at a constant temperature. Though blind to green, the flower s clock is sensitive to red light. By exposing the flower to red light of intensity several watts per square meter for minutes to hours, one disrupts the normal rhythmicity. In most cases, it recovers sufficiently within four days so that a phase shift can be measured.
If you do not expect the unexpected you will not find it; for it is hard to be sought out, and difficult.
Heraclitus c 500 BC
Things are seldom what they seem.
Buttercup to Captain Corcoran in HMS Pinafore
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© 2001 Springer Science+Business Media New York
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Winfree, A.T. (2001). The Flower of Kalanchoë . In: The Geometry of Biological Time. Interdisciplinary Applied Mathematics, vol 12. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-3484-3_21
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-3484-3_21
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-3196-2
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