Few previous studies document effects of herbivores on the reproduction of wild plants in situ. We examined the impact of aphids' on seed production in wild radish (Raphanus sativus L.), an annual herb. Aphid infestation increased during the three-month flowering period. Flower and fruit production declined during the season, in part due to aphids. Inflorescences of lateblooming plants more tha...

It is frequently observed that males of dioecious plant species flower earlier in the season than females, although the generality of this pattern has not been quantified. One hypothesis for earlier male flowering is that females require more time for resource acquisition before reproduction; another is that selection for access to unfertilized ovules favors early-flowering males. Here I show t...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Knowledge of pollen dispersal patterns and variation of fecundity is essential to understanding plant evolutionary processes and to formulating strategies to conserve forest genetic resources. Nevertheless, the pollen dispersal pattern of dipterocarp, main canopy tree species in palaeo-tropical forest remains unclear, and flowering intensity variation in the field suggests h...

Flowering plant density can increase number of visits and fruit set in multi-flowering plants, however this aspect has not been studied on few flower species. We studied the effects of individual floral display and plant density on the fruit production of the epiphytic, moth-pollinated orchid, Ryncholaelia glauca, in an oak forest of Chavarrillo, Veracruz, Mexico. Species is non-autogamous, and...

Background In the Romanian flora, several species of the Betula genus are present, especially European white birch (B. pendula, syn. B. verrucosa) and downy birch (B. pubescens, syn. B. alba). Rare species are B. nana and B. humilis. In Southern Romania, the sensitization to Betulaceae pollen in patients with allergic rhinitis is less frequent than that to Poaceae pollen. The flowering season o...

The experiment was carried out to study the impact of chilling and night break on the flowering of ornamental plants in their off-season period. Larsenianthus careyanus (Benth.) W.J. Kress & Mood is a wild potential ornamental ginger naturally growing in the evergreen forest of North Eastern states of India was selected for the current study. The rhizomes were collected and stored at 15oC for 8...

My research on mango flowering began about five years ago. By that time, smudging, the traditional Philippine use of smoke to promote flowering, had given way to the more convenient and efficacious use of ethephon (a compound that generates ethylene in plants) and potassium nitrate sprays. Not only were mango trees in the Philippines stimulated to flower out of season with these treatments, but...

Sustainable utilization of lignocellulosic perennial grass feedstocks will be enabled by high biomass production and optimized cell wall chemistry for efficient conversion into biofuels. MicroRNAs are regulatory elements that modulate the expression of genes involved in various biological functions in plants, including growth and development. In greenhouse studies, overexpressing a microRNA (mi...

Plant-pollinator systems may be considered as biological markets in which pollinators choose between different flowers that advertise their nectar/pollen rewards. Although expected to play a major role in structuring plant-pollinator interactions, community-wide patterns of flower scent signals remain largely unexplored. Here we show for the first time that scent advertisement is higher in plan...

The objectives of this study were to determine the effect of light enhancement and hastened reproductive development on nitrogen and dry matter accumulation by field-grown soybean (Glycine max [L.] Merr.). The impacts of photosynthate supply and reproductive development on change in the season-long profiles of in vivo leaf nitrate reductase (NR) activity and root nodule acetylene reduction (AR)...