The Caricaceae is a small family of tropical trees and herbs in which most species are dioecious. In the present study, we extend our previous work on dioecy in the Caricaceae, characterising the morphological variation in sexual expression in flowers of the dioecious tree Jacaratia mexicana. We found that, in J. mexicana, female plants produce only pistillate flowers, while male plants are sex...

Many insects which gather nectar or pollen exhibit flower constancy, a learned fidelity to a particular species of plant. Recent studies suggest that foraging insects may use a perceptual mechanism akin to a search image to detect flowers, in a manner analogous to the way that predators search for prey. This has emerged as an alternative (but not mutually exclusive) explanation for flower const...

The production of seed by both selfing and outcrossing, or mixed mating, may be selected for under conditions of variable pollinator availability. Seed production was examined following experimental manipulations of perfect and pistillate flowers of the gynomonoecious plant Silene noctiflora. Style excision experiments in a greenhouse demonstrated that autonomous selfing occurs in the perfect f...

Arabidopsis flowers have four petals. Other floral organs are not represented on the diagram. KLU expression in petals is shown in red. Wild-type tissue is shown in yellow whereas klu mutant tissue is shown in blue. Wild-type flowers are larger than klu mutant flowers. Flowers that contain wild-type and mutant tissue (chimeric flowers) are of intermediate size between wild-type and mutant flowe...

Matches between the bills of hummingbirds and the flowers they visit have been interpreted as examples of coadaptation and feeding specialization. Observations of birds feeding at flowers longer or shorter than their bills combined with a lack of experimental evidence for foraging trade-offs, however, fail to support these interpretations. We addressed these inconsistencies by considering a sel...

A field experiment was carried out at Horticulture Farm of Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, Dhaka-1207, Bangladesh, to assess the effect of different plant growth regulators on tomato during summer season 2011. Different plant growth regulators (PGR) viz. PGR = Control, PGR = 4-CPA (4-chloro phenoxy 0 1 acetic acid) @ 20 ppm, PGR = GA (Gibberellic Acid) @ 20 ppm and PGR = 4-CPA + GA3 @ 20...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Eriocaulaceae (Poales) is currently divided in two subfamilies: Eriocauloideae, which comprises two genera and Paepalanthoideae, with nine genera. The floral anatomy of Actinocephalus polyanthus, Leiothrix fluitans, Paepalanthus chlorocephalus, P. flaccidus and Rondonanthus roraimae was studied here. The flowers of these species of Paepalanthoideae are unisexual, and form ca...

Plants often grow in clusters of various sizes and have a variable number of flowers per inflorescence. This small-scale spatial clustering affects insect foraging strategies and plant reproductive success. In our study, we aimed to determine how visitation rate and foraging behaviour of pollinators depend on the number of flowers per plant and on the size of clusters of multiple plants using D...

Brassica napus Linnaeus is considered a self-compatible crop; however, studies show that bee foraging elevates their seed production. Considering bee food shortages during the winter season and that the canola is a winter crop, this study aimed to evaluate the foraging behaviour of Apis mellifera Linnaeus, 1758 regarding those flowers, and to verify if it presents adequate behaviour for success...

Farmers in developing countries like Pakistan do not make the best use of allpotential resources; therefore, they inefficient decisions their agricultural activities. Primarilythis study aims at estimating efficiency Statice (cut-flower) production and also investigating somesocioeconomic factors responsible for inefficiency. A survey with a sample 70 farmers engaged inthe cultivation cut flowe...