Effect of plant age and temperature on bolting in Chinese cabbage

The antioxidant BHT — commonly used as a food stabilizer — when applied in aqueous solution to the tips of 5-day-old pea seedlings, to young apple seedlings or to germinating lettuce seeds, produced a suden cessation of growth that, when growth was resumed, was followed by certain morphological changes. Treatments with BHT caused the formation of (1) a bunch of new shoots arising at the apex of apple seedlings, (2) 2 or 3 adventitious fast-growing shoots from the base of the pea hypocotyl, and (3) adventitious growing points in lettuce plants. This multiplication of growing points was followed, during further development, by splitting of the apple seedling stems and lettuce leaf blades into independently growing organs.