title: "Florigen ": an intriguing concept of plant biology.
abstract: "Florigen" is the name that Mikhail Chailakhyan coined in 1937 for the putative hormone regulating flowering. At this concept, plant physiologists arrived following early research concerning the effects of temperature and day length on the transition from vegetative to reproductive stages of plants. The existence of florigen was postulated on the experimental backgrounds involving i) the response of plants to inductive conditions; ii) transmission of a flowering stimulus by grafting; iii) extraction of this stimulus from induced plants. This experimental results showed the existence of florigen at least as concept because they always failed to offer the experimental evidence of its chemical existence. The myth of florigen persisted as long as the end of the Seventies, when physiologists began to consider flowering as a complex process in which various classes of hormones might variously interplay.
authors.affiliation: Istituto di Virologia vegetale del C.N.R., Torino, Italy.
authors.forename: Sergio
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Pennazio
mesh_terms: D001901:Botany / Q000266:history*; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D063245:Plant Development; D010937:Plant Growth Regulators / Q000502:physiology; D018521:Plant Physiological Phenomena; D013696:Temperature
chemical_list: D010937:Plant Growth Regulators