Non-decorative floral organs largely contribute to transpiration and vase life of cut hydrangea flowers with lacecap inflorescence

We compared transpirations and vase lives of cut hydrangea (Hydrangea spp.) flowers using two cultivars with lacecap inflorescence ('Blue sky' and 'S-1') and their mutants with hortensia inflorescence ('BM-1' and 'SM-1'). There was no significant difference in the transpirations from cut flowers with the lacecap and hortensia inflorescences in the two cultivars. However, transpiration from 'S-1' cut flowers tended to exhibit higher transpiration than 'SM-1'. There was also no significant difference in the vase lives of 'Blue sky' and 'BM-1'. However, 'S-1' had a significantly shorter vase life (3 days) than its mutant 'SM-1'. This was due to the greater number of total florets in 'S-1' cut flowers than 'SM-1'. The non-decorative floret clusters and clusters of petals, stamens, and pistil of decorative florets exhibited lower temperatures than decorative sepals in both 'Blue sky' and 'BM-1' on thermal images. Therefore, we estimated the transpiration from the non-decorative florets and studied the effect of removal of non-decorative florets on the vase life of cut flowers using two lacecap cultivars, 'Blue sky' and 'Fairy eye'. Estimated transpirations from the non-decorative florets of 'Blue sky' and 'Fairy eye' accounted for approximately 61.8% and 39.7%, respectively, of total transpirations per cut flower, and the removal of non-decorative florets significantly extended the vase lives of cut flowers (18 and 22 days, respectively). The difference in the contribution of the non-decorative florets to the transpiration between the cultivars is due to the difference in the number of non-decorative florets in the inflorescences. We conclude that the use of cut flowers that do not bear too many non-decorative florets and/or treatments that suppress the transpiration from non-decorative florets would be effective in extending the vase life of cut hydrangea flowers with lacecap inflorescence.