WITHIN-CROWN FLOWERING SYNCHRONY IN STRANGLER FIGS, AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO ALLOFUSION

We studied flowering phenology at the level of individual branches wit hin strangler fig trees to determine (1) whether branches bloomed asyn chronously within trees and (2) whether asynchrony, if observed, could be ascribed to genetically different branches of mosaic trees (i.e., trees formed by spontaneous grafting of generically different individu als) undergoing individual flowering cycles that were out of phase wit h each ocher. Although asynchrony was fairly common, it most of reflec ted individual branches failing to bloom during one flowering episode, chen coming back to bloom in synchrony at the next episode. We detect ed fewer mosaic trees than expected, and found only a very weak sugges tion that mosaic trees may show less within-tree synchrony than simple trees.