Flowering time summary
The control of flowering is controlled by exogenous and endogenous stimuli, ensuring that flowering occurs at an optimal time for fertilisation and seed development to occur. Until recently, much of the understanding of how plants undergo the change from vegetative to reproductive growth came from classical physiological experiments performed in the early to mid 20th Century. Recent work has greatly increased our understanding of the molecular mechanisms controlling flowering by using species such as rice and Arabidopsis as models.
In particular, this has provided molecular models of how vernalisation and photoperiodism are controlled that support and extends classical models based on physiological approaches.