Cymes and racemes form two broad types of inflorescence architecture. Racemes are monopodial and bear axillary flowers, but in cymes the main stem ends in an apical flower and is continued sympodially by a series of lateral shoots. In these shoots floral identity is delayed by a previously unknown mechanism. We show that the MADS-box transcription factor EXTRAPETALS (EXP) transiently represses ...

In many plants the transition from vegetative growth to flowering is controlled by environmental cues. One of these cues is day length or photoperiod, which synchronizes flowering of many species with the changing seasons. Recently, advances have been made in understanding the molecular mechanisms that confer photoperiodic control of flowering and, in particular, how inductive events occurring ...

Since the transition from vegetative to floral development in plants is likely to be influenced by gene expression in several plant organs, we have used an in vitro system, the tobacco "thin cell layer" system as a model for investigating gene expression associated with the initiation of flowering in higher plants. cDNA cloning has been used to identify mRNAs abundant during thin cell layer flo...

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Plants of Lycium californicum, L. exsertum, and L. fremontii produce flowers that are either male-sterile (female) or hermaphroditic, and populations are morphologically gynodioecious. As is commonly found in gynodioecious species, flowers on female plants are smaller than those on hermaphrodites for a number of floral traits. Floral size dimorphism has often been hypothesized to be the result ...

1. The evolution of flowering plants has undoubtedly been influenced by a pollinator's ability to learn to associate floral signals with food. Here, we address the question of 'why' flowers produce scent by examining the ways in which olfactory learning by insect pollinators could influence how floral scent emission evolves in plant populations. 2. Being provided with a floral scent signal allo...

The flowers of different plant species have diverse scents with varied chemical compositions. Hence, every floral scent does not uniformly affect insect feeding preferences. The blowfly, Phormia regina, is a nectar feeder, and when a fly feeds on flower nectar, its olfactory organs, antennae, and maxillary palps are exposed to the scent. Generally, feeding preference is influenced by food flavo...

†Background and Aims Dimorphism among floral traits can evolve through variation in selection intensity between female and male performance, especially when sex functions are separated between flowers on a plant (monoecy), or between individuals (dioecy). In animal-pollinated species, male floral traits are predicted to be larger because competition for pollinators should favour larger displays...

Transition from vegetative to floral buds is a critical physiological change during flower induction that determines fruit productivity. Small non-coding RNAs (sRNAs) including microRNAs (miRNAs) and small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) are pivotal regulators of plant growth and development. Although the key role of sRNAs in flowering regulation has been well-described in Arabidopsis and some other ...