polycarpic

Polycarpic plants are those that flower and set seeds many times before dying. A term of identical meaning is pleonanthic and iteroparous. Polycarpic plants are able to reproduce multiple times due to at least some portion of its meristems being able to maintain a vegetative state in some fashion so that it may reproduce again. This type of reproduction seems to be best suited for plants who have a fair amount of security in their environment as they do continuously reproduce.

Generally, in reference to life-history theory, plants will sacrifice their ability in one regard to improve themselves in another regard, so for polycarpic plants that may strive towards continued reproduction, they might focus less on their growth. However, these aspects may not necessarily be directly correlated and some plants, notably invasive species, do not follow this general trend and actually show a fairly long lifespan with frequent reproduction. To an extent, there does seem to be an importance of the balance of these two traits as one study noted how plants that had a very short lifespan as well as plants that had a very long lifespan and also had little reproductive success were not found in any of the nearly 400 plants included in the study.