Are cut flowers dead?

TheBoyPaj

Graduate Poster
TheBoyPaj
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Aug 14, 2003
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I realised today that I do not understand what it takes to kill a plant.

If a flower is cut and placed in water, it is still alive? It manages to stay erect (oh, stop it) for several days. Is it technically alive, or is it an illusion? Like a corpse on display in a funeral home?

If any biologists could enlighten me, I'd be grateful.
 
They are not dead. They can grow and bloom and presumably pollinate/reproduce. Clearly most are dying but I do not think there is as clear cut line between life and death for plants as for animals.

Also some flowers have the ability to grow in water indefinitely or to be replanted and grow.

CBL
 
TheBoyPaj said:
I realised today that I do not understand what it takes to kill a plant.

If a flower is cut and placed in water, it is still alive? It manages to stay erect (oh, stop it) for several days. Is it technically alive, or is it an illusion? Like a corpse on display in a funeral home?

If any biologists could enlighten me, I'd be grateful.
Click to expand...

One way to think about it is in terms of what it takes to keep individual cells alive. And for plants, that isn't really all that much - as long as the flower isn't wilting, most of the cells in it really are still alive. Those cells need water, and they need food. They draw water and raw materials from below (usually the roots, but the cut end of a flower will still suck up that stuff), and they get energy from above (photosynthesizing leaves). Without water, they'll die relatively quickly (since plants are constantly losing water to the atmosphere), with only water they'll last a while but not indefinitely. But they can, in principle, last indefinitely as long as what they're sucking up provides everything they need. Which is also why you can graft different plants together

Same thing is true to a degree in animals: if you're quick, you can reattach severed limbs in animals and people. The cells take longer to die than the organism as a whole (though animal cells still have much more rapid metabolisms and will die quicker than plant cells). In higher animals, organism death is very rapid because there's a subset of critical cells (the nervous system) which don't last long without oxygen, and which the organism cannot survive without. So if the heart stops for long enough, then there's no possibility of revival even if most of the individual cells are still alive. Plants don't have an equivalently delicate critical subsystem, so they're quite hardy by comparison. Even a number of lower animals can survive being cut up pretty badly (if you cut a starfish in half, each half can regrow into a whole starfish).
 
Dammit. I composed a witty reply and the damn forum borked and lost it all. Grr.
 
What about seeds? Is a seed "alive"? It doesn't do much, as a seed. But it can grow into a plant, in the right environment.
 
TheBoyPaj said:
I realised today that I do not understand what it takes to kill a plant.

If a flower is cut and placed in water, it is still alive? It manages to stay erect (oh, stop it) for several days. Is it technically alive, or is it an illusion? Like a corpse on display in a funeral home?

If any biologists could enlighten me, I'd be grateful.
Click to expand...
You have enlightened me!
Not a biologist, but your post makes me realise
(1) the significance of "brain-dead".
(2) the significance to be called a "vegetable" (when someone is in coma)
(3) the lack of reality of computer games and movies.
where most bad guys get "killed" by a single shot or a single stab.

You have tickled me
A man went for sex-change operation and had his genital removed. She placed the erect genital in a sustaining system. Is s/he technically alive or is it an illusion?
Answer: You have killed a man but created a woman.

You have "enraged" some people
What a lousy excuse for mutilating and abusing plants!
Which ever way, the plant lovers will consider you guilty.

:)
 
Flowers have a pretty short existence even on a flourishing plant.

I suspect the technical answer to the OP depends on the type of plant and exactly what cells have been cut with the flower.

Lots of plants can be propagated from cuttings.
 
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