Immature Spider Flowers

Description

• Cleome grows 3 to 5 feet tall with branching leaves at the base. The plant produces a bloom that takes weeks to fully mature. The buds at the ends bloom first and proceed sequentially toward the tip, which continues to mature and elongate with more buds over the season. The leaves are palmate and made up of 5 leaflets that measure 5 to 6 inches long. Seed pods form from the flowers at the end of summer that hang from long stems off the stalk.

Seeds

• The seeds of spider flowers are small and comma to C shaped. They germinate quite readily in poor or disturbed soils. The plants can flower from seeds in 10 to 12 weeks. Once flowering has finished, the seeds are mature and ready to sprout in seven to eight weeks. Each seed pod can produce 50 seeds which will in turn become new plants in good conditions. Seeds require a chilling period before germination and can be harvested and stored in the refrigerator.

The Flower Cycle

• Spider flower is comprised of many different parts which open at various stages in the flower's development. It is more commonly called an inflorescence, which is a whorl of many little flowers. The most central flowers are immature while the outer petals are made up of older, mature flowers. New flowers open daily and the inflorescence as a whole can persist for several weeks. The unopened buds are green and then gradually begin to turn the color of the flower.

Anatomy of Cleome Flowers

• Cleome flowers are made up of four petals, six stamens and a central pistil where pollen travels to the ovary. The stamens are long and slim with anthers tipped in pollen. The flowers are perfect and contain both male and female parts. In their native regions they are pollinated primarily by bats. Here they are usually pollinated by beetles. Fruits develop as each flower is spent, but the latest flowers fail to produce fruit due to a hormone signal that the plant has produced sufficient seed. This causes the pistil to become unusable and pollination will no longer occur on the late-season blooms.