The perianth persists after flowering in many plants, yet its post-floral functionality has been little investigated, and the few studies available provide ambiguous evidence. This paper tests the hypothesis that the green persistent sepals of the perennial herb, Helleborus foetidus, contribute to the plant's fitness by enhancing seed number and/or size. Post-floral contribution of the calyx to...

The tribe Delphinieae (Ranunculaceae) comprises two species-rich genera, Aconitum and Delphinium, the latter including Consolida and Aconitella. The 650-700 species are distributed in Eurasia and North America; three species occur on tropical African mountains. Maximum likelihood analyses of 2088 aligned nucleotides of plastid and nuclear sequences obtained from up to 185 species of Delphinieae...

J. Mlinarec1, Z. Šatović2, N. Malenica1, I. Ivančić-Baće1 and V. Besendorfer1,* Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb, Division of Biology, Department of Molecular Biology, Horvatovac 102a, HR-10000 Zagreb, Croatia and Department of Seed Science and Technology, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Zagreb, Svetošimunska 25, HR-10000 Zagreb, Croatia * For correspondence. E-mail [email protected]...

PREMISE OF THE STUDY Microsatellite markers were developed and characterized in the vulnerable plant Hepatica nobilis var. japonica (Ranunculaceae) to investigate its genetic diversity, population structure, and gene flow. METHODS AND RESULTS Fourteen microsatellite markers were developed. The number of alleles per locus ranged from one to 12, and the expected heterozygosity per locus ranged ...

During an investigation of antitumor substances from Nigella glandulifera Freyn et Sint. (Ranunculaceae) the cytotoxicity of two oleanane triterpene saponins isolated from the seeds of this species, kalopanaxsaponins A and I, was evaluated against HepG2, drug resistant HepG2 (R-HepG2) (two hepatocyte cell lines) and primary cultured normal mouse hepatocytes. Evident cytotoxic activities were ob...