THE FIRST step in producing a satisfactory crop of tobacco is to use good seed that is true to type. The grower often can save his own seed to advantage, if he wants to. Before topping is done, he should go over the tobacco field carefully to pick out desirable seed plants. When he has decided on the ideal type of plant, he should select the plants that conform to this type for producing seed. ...

PREMISE OF THE STUDY Mammalian herbivores, particularly white-tailed deer, can have a major impact on plant abundance and distribution. However, plants can tolerate herbivory by increasing seed production or seed quality. We used the monocarpic perennial Prenanthes roanensis to examine tolerance to mammalian herbivory through seed quality and modeled the effects of tolerance on population growt...

Although exotic plants comprise a substantial portion of floristic biodiversity, their contributions to community and ecosystem processes are not well understood. We manipulated plant species richness in old-field communities to compare the impacts of native vs. exotic species on plant biomass, seed production, and arthropod community structure. Plants within diverse communities, regardless of ...

Recently, two areas of plant phylogeny have developed in ways that could not have been anticipated, even a few years ago. Among extant seed plants, new phylogenetic hypotheses suggest that Gnetales, a group of nonflowering seed plants widely hypothesized to be the closest extant relatives of angiosperms, may be less closely related to angiosperms than was believed. In addition, recent phylogene...

Herbivory has many effects on plants, ranging from shifts in primary processes such as photosynthesis, growth, and phenology to effects on defense against subsequent herbivores and other species interactions. In this study, I investigated the effects of herbivory on seed and seedling characteristics of several families of wild radish (Raphanus raphanistrum) to test the hypothesis that herbivory...

The European vines pale swallowwort and black swallowwort are invading various habitats in northeastern North America. It is unclear how these plants might respond to potential biological control agents, as they experience little herbivore damage in North America, or longer durations of mowing given the reported lack of efficacy of mechanical control. We evaluated the effect of six seasons of a...

Seeds are one of the most significant innovations in the land plant lineage, critical to the diversification and adaptation of plants to terrestrial environments. From perspective of seed evo-devo, the most crucial developmental stage in this innovation is seed maturation, which includes accumulation of storage reserves, acquisition of desiccation tolerance, and induction of dormancy. Based on ...

Pre-dispersal seed predators are often chosen as biocontrol agents because of their high impacts on plant fitness; however, they have a mixed record in realizing decreased plant population growth. Few studies have experimentally removed agents to explore their impact on weed population growth. Here, we used manipulative experiments with invasive yellow starthistle (YST), Centaurea solstitialis,...