Some flowers bloom in spring, but some in summer.
And there’re even flowers that bloom only in winter?
Why do they bloom in different seasons?
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It’s because they need specific weather and conditions to grow and bloom. Spring flowers bloom when it’s cool and sunny after the winter cold.
Summer flowers need lots of sunshine and warmth.
Winter flowers are special and can grow when it’s cold, even when there’s snow.
Each type of flower blooms when the weather is just right for them to grow the best and attract the insects they need for pollination.
Right so, plants don’t have a concept of time, but they’re very responsive to changes in their environment. Each species of flower has needs/ conditions that it needs to be able to flower, as the seasons shift, the temperature and sunlight make different levels of chemical reactions inside the plant leaves, and these different chemicals trigger different growth responses, for example, a plant that flowers in winter would respond to the suddenly cold temperatures or a change in the amount of sunlight. The plant knows what conditions it thrives in best and so tells itself to flower, because plants flower only to attract pollinators or at least to reproduce, such as releasing seeds by wind, or grow fruit so that the fruit containing the seeds manage to find somewhere to root.
Competition + Evolution. Living things compete for resources. Imagine all flowers bloomed at once. Flowers that are pollinated by the same insects would struggle to all get pollinated.
Because of this, there are evolutionary advantages for blooming during different times and different ways causing plants to diverge from one another over many many years.
A bit of survival of the fittest honestly. Flowers will bloom at different times to maximize their chances for propagation with the least amount of competition.
For example, if every flower blooms in May there’s a risk soecies B may not be pollinated because they’re overlooked because flowers A, C, and D stand out more to the pollinator. If flower B blooms before or after ACD do, then it gets all of the pollinators to itself and has a much higher chance of success.
Granted, flowers can’t *choose* when to bloom because they’re not sapient. But let’s say ACD bloom only in the month of May while B blooms from mid April to mid May. Since B is less fit than ACD, it probably that the mid April blooms will be pollinated more. This will then lead to more of species B blooming in mid April next year than it does in mid May. Over time, due to the lowered competition in April, species B may slowly evolve to only blooming in April, therefore maximizing its propagation.
The reality is a lot more complicated than the example, but when you add in mimetic insect species, bird migrations that pollinate specific plants at specific times of the year, animals that eat the plants, and human intervention you can kind of see the patterns of how they interact to cause plants to bloom at different times of the year.
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