I am not a botanist. I'm a poet. I'm hoping to find a common term or scientific term which connotes that a plant or it's leaves or petals have reached full-bloom and are now fully-open, thus presenting it's fullest extent to the sun. Can anyone suggest such terms to me? Thanks. JJW
Only if you're talking about light bulbs. Inflorescence = flower cluster containing blossoms or flowers. For poetic purposes I'd stick with full bloom. Ralph
That's spelled 'fluorescence', as in fluorescent lights. Florescence is the correct term for being in a state of flowering. An inflorescence is an anatomical feature, so 'peak inflorescence' would be analagous to 'peak hand' or 'peak arm', make no sense.
Too bad you're not writing about decaying flowers - senescence is poetic. None of the terms I could find were particularly imaginative - permutations on mature flowers, maturity, peak bloom, and so on. I think that frees you to be creative - after all, one could view that there is only a single point where there is a peak between development and decay. An opposing argument is that the developmental processes within the flower are ongoing until seed dispersal, i.e., even if the petals of the flower are decaying, other processes in the flower like seed development may be just starting.
In terms of meaning and word choice I stand by inflorescence although florescence would also work. But I think the most poetic term available for this phenomenon is "in full bloom", which is where we started.
It would appear that some (I'll name no names) contributors to this forum have too much time on their hands! You know the saying: "the idle mind is the devil's playground". May I suggest a theraputic working holiday (rock picking, fence maintenance, weeding...) on a certain Gulf Island farm? Ralph
