Rafflesia is a biologically enigmatic species that is very rare in occurrence and possesses an extraordinary morphology. This parasitic plant produces a gigantic flower up to one metre in diameter with no leaves, stem or roots. However, little is known about the floral biology of this species especially at the molecular level. In an effort to address this issue, we have generated and characteri...

Native flower visitors removed less nectar from trypsin proteinase inhibitor (TPI)-silenced Nicotiana attenuata plants (ir-pi) than from wild-type plants in four field seasons of releases, even when the nectar repellent, nicotine, was also silenced. Analysis of floral chemistry revealed no differences in the emission of the floral attractants benzylacetone and benzaldehyde or in the concentrati...

Observations of hummingbirds feeding at flowers longer or shorter than their bills seem to contradict the view that bill lengths of hummingbirds evolved in concert with the lengths of their flowers. Recent experiments, however, indicate that a hummingbird’s ability to feed at artificial flowers of different lengths depends on the widths of the flowers. We examined if the broad range of flower l...

The low-temperature flowering-response pathway, used as an inductive stimulus to induce flowering in plant species from temperate regions in response to cold temperature, has been extensively studied. However, limited information is available on the flower transition of several bulbous species, which require high temperature for flower differentiation. Narcissus tazetta var. chinensis (Chinese ...

Endogenous indoleacetic acid (IAA) levels of Euphorbia esula L. primary root and root buds were examined at three phenologic stages. High performance liquid chromatography coupled with fluorescence detection and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, using (13)C(6)[benzene ring]-indole-3-acetic acid as internal standard, were used to measure root bud free and bound IAA levels in vegetative, full...

Flower constellations are a particular set of satellite constellations where every satellite covers the same repeating space track. When the flower constellations are visualized on an Earth centred earth fixed reference frame, the relative orbits shows flower-shaped figures centered on the Earth. In this paper the shape and the position of a particular flower constellations has been designed fo...

Several species of flower thrips, including the Florida flower thrips {Frankliniella bispinosa (Morgan)}, Western flower thrips {F. occidentalis (Pergande)}, Eastern flower thrips {F. tritici (Fitch)}, and Scritothrips ruthveni Shull, have recently become known as pests of cultivated blueberries (Spiers et al. 2004). The three Franklinella species are pests of both rabbiteye and southern highbu...

The quantification of floral shape variations is difficult because flower structures are both diverse and complex. Traditionally, floral shape variations are quantified using the qualitative and linear measurements of two-dimensional (2D) images. The 2D images cannot adequately describe flower structures, and thus lead to unsatisfactory discrimination of the flower shape. This study aimed to ac...

Headspace-solid phase microextraction-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (HS-SPME-GC-MS) was used to identify the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) of the different flower development stages of Cananga odorata for the evaluation of floral volatile polymorphism as a basis to determine the best time of harvest. Electronic nose results, coupled with discriminant factor analysis, suggested that e...