The utility of multivariate foliar physiognomy, specifically the Climate Leaf Analysis Multivariate Program (CLAMP), to yield reliable estimates of enthalpy and hence paleoelevation has been demonstrated by comparison with other proxies, yet concerns have arisen regarding uncertainties arising from 1) apparent ambiguities in the scoring regime and 2) the way leaf size is scored. Regarding 1) sc...

there are instances in which it is desirable to determine relationships among fruit physical attributes. for example, fruits are often graded on the basis of size and projected area, but it may be more suitable and/or economical to develop a machine which grades by mass. therefore, a relationship between mass and dimensions or projected areas and/ or volume of fruits is needed. various grad...

Leaf size and shape play important roles in agronomic traits, such as yield, quality and stress responses. Wide variations in leaf morphological traits exist in cultivated varieties of many plant species. By now, the genetics of leaf shape and size have not been characterized in Brassica napus. In this study, a population of 172 recombinant inbred lines (RILs) was used for quantitative trait lo...

Plant classification and identification is an important and difficult task. In this paper, a systematic approach for extracting the leaf architecture characters from captured digital images is proposed. The input image is first pre-processed to be prepared for feature extraction. In the second stage, different architectural features are extracted and mapped to semantic botanical terms. Lastly, ...

Plants sense the foliar shade of competitors and alter their developmental programs through the shade-avoidance response. Internode and petiole elongation, and changes in overall leaf area and leaf mass per area, are the stereotypical architectural responses to foliar shade in the shoot. However, changes in leaf shape and complexity in response to shade remain incompletely, and qualitatively, d...

The paleohexaploid crop Brassica rapa harbors an enormous reservoir of morphological variation, encompassing leafy vegetables, vegetable and fodder turnips (Brassica rapa, ssp. campestris), and oil crops, with different crops having very different leaf morphologies. In the triplicated B. rapa genome, many genes have multiple paralogs that may be regulated differentially and contribute to phenot...

Wilf et al. (1998) analyzed leaf sizes in modern vegetation and concluded that leaf sizes accurately predict mean annual precipitation (MAP). However, we question the methods employed by these authors to derive leaf size; the modern samples are not comparable to one another or to fossil leaf assemblages, and the influence of temperature on leaf size is ignored. Data for some samples were derive...