The complex and coordinated regulation of flowering has high ecological and agricultural significance. The maturity locus E1 has a large impact on flowering time in soybean, but the molecular basis for the E1 locus is largely unknown. Through positional cloning, we delimited the E1 locus to a 17.4-kb region containing an intron-free gene (E1). The E1 protein contains a putative bipartite nuclea...

Many studies have found that the timing of flowering has shifted temporally in response to climate change, but few have ascertained the possibility of asynchrony developing between flowering and pollinator appearance. Collapses in pollination could have serious consequences for interdependent plant-pollinator networks. Five years of plant-pollinator data collected in twelve montane meadows at t...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS In sub-alpine habitats, patchiness in snowpack produces marked, small-scale variation in flowering phenology. Plants in early- and late-melting patches are therefore likely to experience very different conditions during their flowering periods. Mertensia fusiformis is an early-flowering perennial that varies conspicuously in style length within and among populations. The hyp...

The timing of flowering is pivotal for maximizing reproductive success under fluctuating environmental conditions. Flowering time is tightly controlled by complex genetic networks that integrate endogenous and exogenous cues, such as light, temperature, photoperiod, and hormones. Here, we show that AGAMOUS-LIKE16 (AGL16) and its negative regulator microRNA824 (miR824) control flowering time in ...

Flowering in plants is synchronized by both environmental cues and internal regulatory factors. Previous studies have shown that the endophytic fungus Piriformospora indica promotes the growth and early flowering in Coleus forskohlii (a medicinal plant) and Arabidopsis. To further dissect the impact of P. indica on pathways responsible for flowering time in Arabidopsis, we co-cultivated Arabido...

Brassinosteroids (BRs) regulate many physiological processes during plant development, including flowering. However, little is known about the components of BR signaling that mediate flowering. Here, we report that BRASSINAZOLE-RESISTANT1 (BZR1), the conformation of which is altered by a cyclophilin (CYP20-2), binds cis-elements in the FLOWERING LOCUS D (FLD) promoter to regulate flowering. Bot...

Periodical organisms, such as bamboos and periodical cicadas, are very famous for their synchronous reproduction. In bamboos and other periodical plants, the synchronicity of mass-flowering and withering has been often reported indicating these species are monocarpic (semelparous) species. Therefore, synchronicity and periodicity are often suspected to be fairly tightly coupled traits in these ...

Plant flowering is a crucial developmental transition from the vegetative to reproductive phase and is properly timed by a number of intrinsic and environmental cues. Genetic studies have identified that chromatin modification influences the expression of FLOWERING LOCUS C (FLC), a MADS-box transcription factor that controls flowering time. Histone deacetylation and methylation at H3K9 and H3K2...

Environmental control of flowering allows plant reproduction to occur under optimal conditions and facilitates adaptation to different locations. At high latitude, flowering of many plants is controlled by seasonal changes in day length. The photoperiodic flowering pathway confers this response in the Brassicaceae, which colonized temperate latitudes after divergence from the Cleomaceae, their ...

Flowering traits in winter annual Arabidopsis thaliana are conferred mainly by two genes, FRIGIDA (FRI) and FLOWERING LOCUS C (FLC). FLC acts as a flowering repressor and is regulated by multiple flowering pathways. We isolated an early-flowering mutant, suppressor of FRIGIDA3 (suf3), which also shows leaf serration, weak apical dominance, and infrequent conversion of the inflorescence shoot to...