Florida ziziphus Ziziphus celata is a self-incompatible clonal shrub comprising fewer than a dozen remnant, uniclonal populations in south-central Florida, USA. We model the population viability of this highly endangered species based on 9 yr of data from 2 populations. The matrix projection model is based on hypothetically independent ‘plants’ defined as clumps of ramets within a 25 cm radius....

Engineers can learn from nature for inspirations to create new designs. The internal structure of lotus roots with several oval holes was studied in this paper for engineering inspirations. The structural performance of lotus roots under outside water pressure was simulated and compared with various cross-sectional areas. The distribution of stresses in the cross-sectional area of lotus roots w...

Molecular phylogenetic analyses of Macaronesian Lotus and related genera were conducted to assess their biogeographic history and taxonomy. Macaronesian Lotus, which are typically classified within one of two subgenera, Lotus subgenus Pedrosia or L. subg. Rhyncholotus, are diagnosed by the presence of a forked or toothed style and differences in corolla morphology. Maximum parsimony and Bayesia...

BACKGROUND The cellular and molecular mechanisms of adipose tissue biology have been studied extensively over the last two decades. Adipose tissue growth involves both an increase in fat cell size and the formation of mature adipocytes from precursor cells. To investigate how natural substances influence these two processes, we examined the effects of lotus leaf extract (Nelumbo nucifera-extrac...

The methanol leaf extracts of Acacia nilotica, Sida cordifolia, Tinospora cordifolia, Withania somnifer and Ziziphus mauritiana showed significant antibacterial activity against Bacillus subtilis, Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas fluorescens, Staphylococcus aureus and Xanthomonas axonopodis pv. malvacearum and antifungal activity against Aspergillus flavus, Dreschlera turcica and Fusarium verticil...

The selected plant Alternenthera sessilis (L.), Houttuynia cordata (Thunb) Murraya koenigii (L.) and Ziziphus oenoplia (L) Miller has been used traditionally in Assam, India for the treatment of diarrhoea and dysentery. However, the claims need to be validated by a suitable experimental model. Therefore, the present study was under taken to evaluate the effect of 50% methanol extracts of Altern...

We report on a black metamaterial of gold fabricated on a lotus leaf that was used as a template. In spite of the extremely thin gold coating (10-nm thick) on the lotus leaf, the surface shows reflectivity below 0.01 over the entire visible spectral range. Finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) calculations suggest that the low reflectivity stems from the secondary structures on the lotus leaf, w...

Here we present the first successful attempt to programme the surface properties of nanostructured soft biological tissues by atomic layer deposition (ALD). The nanopatterned surface of lotus leaf was tuned by 3-125 nm TiO2 thin films. The lotus/TiO2 composites were studied by SEM-EDX, XPS, Raman, TG-DTA, XRR, water contact angle and photocatalysis measurements. While we could preserve the supe...

Since the first studies published in the fifties and sixties (Nakaoki et al., 1956; Harney and Grant, 1964; Bate-Smith, 1965), many authors have investigated the flavonoid chemistry of Lotus corniculatus (Table 1 and Table 2) and demonstrated the richness and diversity of flavonoid compounds in this species. Some authors have examined the variation with altitude of the flavonoid content of Lotu...