BACKGROUND AND AIMS Most Neotropical species of Malpighiaceae produce floral fatty oils in calyx glands to attract pollinating oil-collecting bees, which depend on this resource for reproduction. This specialized type of pollination system tends to be lost in members of the family that occur outside the geographic distribution (e.g. Africa) of Neotropical oil-collecting bees. This study focused...

Jasmonic acid is an important regulator of plant growth, development and defense. The jasmonate-ZIM domain (JAZ) proteins are key regulators in jasmonate signaling ubiquitously present in flowering plants but their functional annotation remains largely incomplete. Recently, we identified 12 putative JAZ proteins in native tobacco, Nicotiana attenuata, and initiated systematic functional charact...

Epidendrum radicans is a food deceptive Batesian mimic of its sympatric model species Asclepias curassavica and Lantana camara. Theoretically, food deceptive orchids should be rare with small inflorescences (Johnson et al. 1993; Weins 1978) yet in San Luis, Costa Rica E. radicans grows in large monotypic stands with individuals sporting up to 12 open flowers per inflorescence. E. radicans might...

the effects of sodium chloride (nacl) salinity (control; canal water with 0.4 ds m-1), 2.5 dsm-1, 5.0 ds m-1, 7.5 ds m-1 and 10.0 ds m-1, respectively) developed after 6 weeks of pruning (beginning of study) on plant growth, flowering and quality of three cut rose (rosa hybrida l.) cultivars viz. ‘kardinal’, ‘angelique’ and ‘gold medal’ were studied to achieve better management, quality product...

BOTANY AND CIVIC INSECURITY appear, at first glance, incompatible. Most plants are sedentary. Patience distinguishes those who study them. For Kant, flowers embodied the idea of an end in themselves: they exemplified the autonomy of the aesthetic. "Flowers are free beauties of nature," he wrote, classing flowers under the heading pulchritudo vap,a. He meant beauty that eludes utilitarian evalua...

Pollen transport by water-flow (hydrophily) is a typical, and almost exclusive, adaptation of plants to life in the marine environment. It is thought that, unlike terrestrial environments, animals are not involved in pollination in the sea. The male flowers of the tropical marine angiosperm Thalassia testudinum open-up and release pollen in mucilage at night when invertebrate fauna is active. H...

A total of 34 floral visitors of Lavandula latifolia (Labiatae) at a southern Spanish locality were examined from the perspective of their "quality" as pollinators. I considered frequency of pollen transfer, number of pollen grains deposited on the stigma, selection of floral sexual stage (flowers are markedly protandrous), and patterns of flight distance between flowers. Hymenoptera deposited ...

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 role of androdioecy (the presence of male and hermaphrodite individuals in a breeding population) in the evolution of dioecy has long been the subject of much interest and discussion1-9. But no functionally androdioecious species has been previously documented2 and recent studies have even raised doubt about whether the phenomenon exists at all3. Although many cases of androdioecy have been...