HOW TO REVIVE CUT FLOWERS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXVI, Issue 18556, 11 August 1922, Page 5

HOW TO REVIVE CUT FLOWERS

Everybody knows that if a drooping flower is put with its stem in water, in a short time it will revive. The flower seems to be able to suck the water up through its stem, and thus, so |to speak, to quench its thirst. When a human being or animal sucks up water, the suction is produced by a muscular contraction of Ute mouth, causing a vacuum, into which the water steadily runs; but the flower has no muscular means of creating a vacuum, and it must depend upon some other property by which to take in its supply of water. This property curiously enough, has nothing whatever to do with the actual structure of the plaut, says Mr. L. W. Martinnant, in “Everyday Science”; it is a physical mechanism to which nature has adapted all forms of vegetable life. Forty-five years ago it was discovered that if strong solutions of various chemicals were separated from weak solutions of other chemicals by means of a specially prepared tissue or membrane, the water from the weaker solution invariably forced its way through Hie membrane, and continued to do so until the strengths of the solutions on either side had become equal. It is exactly this action which takes place when the drooping flower is placed in water. The flower is composed of numerous cells, each of which contains sap, and each of which is surrounded by a skin, or membrane, possessing the peculiar properties described above. Now, the cell-sap is a strong solution of organic chemicals. When the flower has been cut for any length ot time, the evaporation of its moisture tends to increase the strength of the sap solution, aud. incidentally, to decrease the size of the cells, and to cause the flower to droop. Directly the stem is placed in water the latter, being a very weak solution, is forced through the cell membranes in the attempt to reduce lhe strength of the sap solution, and so enters the flower. The result is obvious. The cells nearest the water become distended; they pass the surplus water to those above them, until finally all the cells are filled to their utmost capacity, and the flower stands upright again.