Mike Waldrep commented on "Gladiolus italicus Mill.":

Beautiful!

over 1 year ago

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Mike Waldrep commented on "Gladiolus communis L.":

Beautiful!

over 1 year ago

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lenette barker commented on "Gladiolus communis L.":

I was very excited about the EOL when it first began. However, I thought it would be something that could be accessible by the general public as well as the scientific community. Unfortunately, if this page is any indication, one needs a graduate degree to even figure out what the life form in question is. One would think that 'general description' would be the place where the 'general' public could read about the item, learn its common name - in short, learn what it IS. on this page though, there is only scientific gobbledegook. I am not a stupid person, but when i see terms like 'tunic coriaceous, ' or 'perianth tube obliquely funnel-shaped,' I just turn off. Is this a flower? a shrub? an alien creature? Who knows? Not me, and the EOL is apparently fine with that. imagine a high school or college student trying to write a paper about the other inhabitants of the world. They're going to go to wikipedia, like i am. I want to LEARN about life, but all I'm learning on your site is how much i DON'T know. Surely your contributing experts could use layman's terms in the 'general description' area. Instead it seems as though they (or this contributor anyway) is more interested in impressing the rest of us with his/her exceptional intelligence. Apparently the definition of 'encyclopedia' being used on your site is not 'A work that provides broad, comprehensive coverage of an area or topic' but rather 'a reference work ' designed solely for a post-graduate readership. I am disappointed beyond words. (I can't even tell what this thing is from the pictures, for crying out loud. If it's a flower that grows on this planet,it's the only one i've ever seen that has no stamen or pistil, or even a means of support. Between the picture and the description I have no better understanding of this thing than i did before i opened the page. Only a professional botanist could make heads or tails of this 'information' and they probably already know it anyway. So just who is EOL for?) Disappointedly yours, Lenette Barker

over 2 years ago

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Nikolay Krumov commented on "Gladiolus":

Hello, I'm s a student from Bulgaria and I study Biology in the capital.I'm very interested in plant physiology and I would like to share some information about the reproduction of the popular Gladiolus in the temperate zone from own researches. Before 2 or 3 years i tried to pollinate such plants artificially.It was very curiously for me to understand something.If there is no natural pollinators of these plants in Europe is it possible for an insect to use their flowers for something?Actually, I understood that the answer is yes.Small, black wasps (which I can't classify, sorry )are searching for nectar there.The only problem is that these insects are too small to reach the stamens and the stigma, so They are not qualitive pollinators but they are not the only ones.Near the Gladioli few other garden plants with funnel shaped flowers were growing.These plants were oftenly visited by 2 or 3 specimens of Macroglossum stellatarum (Hummingbird Hawk-moth).These insects understood that the Gladioli are rich of sweet nectar and They started to visit them.These hawk moths are very qualitive pollinators of plants with big and funnel shaped flowers and as it seems these specimens which were visited produced seed capsules without artificial pollination.(I add part of this information in wikipedia) However, I collected all of the seeds.The capsules cracked in different days but it was near the end of the summer.The seeds are dispersed by the wind as it seems.They are pellicle structures with golden to orange color which are easily carried by the wind.They contain a pellet like structure in the center which is actually the true seed.I can divide the seeds in 3 groups - stretched with round and normal ''pellet'', bent with round and normal ''pellet'' and such with shrunk and black ''pellet''.The first has the best germination rate, the second has a good germination rate and the third has the worst.Around 2 weeks after the sowing of the seeds they produce a small and white germ which eneters into the soil.The germ comes directly from the ''pellet'' and does not cross the envelopment.At the opposite side of the seed the first grass - like leaf is produced and grows without limits till end of the first year of the young plant.Other leafs are not formed.The seeds also form a small conection between them and the plant.This thin filament also stays till the end of the first year.After that the first small bulb is formed and it is not bigger than a bulbil.The small bulbs won't give any signs of life if the conditions are not different after the rest.I don't now what happens after that because right now i am carring of Gladioli which bulbs are formed during the last year and I'll see what will happen. The rate of germination in Gladiolus is high but the rate of survival is low.From nearly 400 sowen and germinated seeds only 6 or 7 formed bulbs.From theese 6 or 7 small bulbs only 3 germinated on their second year! I am doing that because I would like to know what are the chanses of some species from one place to enters into the ecosystem of another.I think that it's a nice way to understand about the rearranging of the ecosystems because every species has different abillity to makes it.

almost 3 years ago

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