Phytophagous insects use a wide range of indicators or associated cues to avoid laying eggs in sites where offspring survival is low. For insects that lay eggs in flowers, these unsuitable sites may be created by the host plant's resource allocation to flowers. In the sequentially flowering host plant, Yucca glauca, late-opening distal flowers are more likely to be aborted in the presence of al...

Vernicia fordii is a monoecious and diclinous species with male and female flowers on the same inflorescence. Low female to male flower ratio is one of the main reasons for low yield in this species. However, little is known of its floral development and sex determination. Here, according to the results of scanning electron microscopy and histological analysis, the floral development of V. ford...

Carica papaya L. is an important economic crop worldwide and is used as a model plant for sex-determination research. To study the different flower sex types, we screened sex-related genes using alternative splicing sequences (AS-seqs) from a transcriptome database of the three flower sex types, i.e., males, females, and hermaphrodites, established at 28 days before flowering using 15 bacterial...

Pollen transport by water-flow (hydrophily) is a typical, and almost exclusive, adaptation of plants to life in the marine environment. It is thought that, unlike terrestrial environments, animals are not involved in pollination in the sea. The male flowers of the tropical marine angiosperm Thalassia testudinum open-up and release pollen in mucilage at night when invertebrate fauna is active. H...

A total of 34 floral visitors of Lavandula latifolia (Labiatae) at a southern Spanish locality were examined from the perspective of their "quality" as pollinators. I considered frequency of pollen transfer, number of pollen grains deposited on the stigma, selection of floral sexual stage (flowers are markedly protandrous), and patterns of flight distance between flowers. Hymenoptera deposited ...

1. We measured the effects of variation in corolla curvature and nectary aperture radius on pollinator foraging ability using the hawkmoth Manduca sexta and 3D-printed artificial flowers whose shapes were mathematically specified. 2. In dimorphic arrays containing trumpet-shaped flowers and flat-disk flowers, hawkmoths were able to empty the nectaries of significantly more trumpet-shaped flower...

A new species of Rafflesia (Rafflesiaceae) from Luzon Island, Philippines, Rafflesia consueloae Galindon, Ong & Fernando, is described and illustrated. It is distinct from all other species of Rafflesia in its small-sized flowers, the upright perigone lobes, and prominently cream-white disk surface that is often devoid of processes. Its small-sized flowers, with an average diameter of 9.73 cm w...

The evaluation of antioxidant capacity, total phenolics, vitamin C content and identification of several phenolic acids and flavonoids was performed in the following fresh and dried herbs widely used in folk medicine throughout Slovenia and elsewhere: elder berries (Sambucus nigra L.), barberries (Berberis vulgaris L.), rowan tree berries (Sorbus aucuparia L.), coltsfoot flowers (Tussilago farf...

The authors investigated the use by wild-living rufous hummingbirds (Selasphorus rufus) of flower color pattern and flower position for remembering rewarded flowers. Birds were presented with arrays of artificial flowers, a proportion of which was rewarded. Once the locations were learned by the birds, the array was moved 2 m, and flower color pattern and/or rewarded positions were manipulated....

Flowering is a critical step in fructification. No flowers mean no fruit, and when flower number is low crop load may be limited by the number of flowers formed. In most cases, however, citrus trees form a number of flowers exceedingly higher than the final number of fruits harvested, which usually is a very low percentage of the initial flower number. As in other species which form a large amo...