Environmental stress and flowering time

Plants maximize their chances to survive adversities by reprogramming their development according to environ- mental conditions. Adaptive variations in the timing to flow- ering reflect the need for plants to set seeds under the most favorable conditions. A complex network of genetic pathways allows plants to detect and integrate external (e.g., photope- riod and temperature) and/or internal (e.g., age) information to initiate the floral transition. Furthermore different types of environmental stresses play an important role in the flo- ral transition. The emerging picture is that stress conditions often affect flowering through modulation of the photoperi- odic pathway. in this review we will discuss different modes of cross talk between stress signaling and photoperiodic flowering, highlighting the central role of the florigen genes in this process.