DNA barcodes can facilitate identification of organisms especially when morphological characters are limited or unobservable. To what extent this potential is realized in specific groups of plants remains to be determined. Libraries of barcode sequences from well-studied authoritatively identified plants represented by herbarium voucher specimens are needed in order for DNA barcodes to serve th...

Before the Inca reigned, two empires held sway over the central Andes from anno Domini 600 to 1000: the Wari empire to the north ruled much of Peru, and Tiwanaku to the south reigned in Bolivia. Face-to-face contact came when both colonized the Moquegua Valley sierra in southern Peru. The state-sponsored Wari incursion, described here, entailed large-scale agrarian reclamation to sustain the oc...

Polyploidy plays a prominent role in the speciation process in plants. Many species are known to be part of agamic complexes comprising sexual diploids and more or less exclusively asexual polyploids. However, polyploid formation has been studied in very few cases, primarily because of the challenges in examining these cases phylogenetically. In this study, we demonstrate the use of a variety o...

A review with 54 references covers all aspects of hawthorn, the genus Crataegus, including its traditional uses, chemical constituents, pharmacological activities, and clinical effects. Although the effectiveness of hawthorn on the treatment of cardiovascular diseases has received extensive attention worldwide, further scientific research on various areas such as pharmacokinetics, mechanism of ...

The present study was carried out to study the effect of antioxidants on oxidised LDL + VLDL and found that vitamin E, eugenol and tincture of crataegus (antioxidants) inhibited oxidation of (LDL + VLDL) similar to standard antioxidant (butylated hydroxy toluene). Vitamin C acted as an antioxidant at lower concentration, and prooxidant at higher concentration.

An agamic complex of 20- and 10-stamen, black-fruited hawthorns (Crataegus subg. Sanguineae, sect. Douglasianae) occurs in western North America, with a 10-stamen taxon disjunct the upper Great Lakes basin. Here, we recircumscribe 20-stamen taxa at core this (C. ser. Douglasianae). This is needed order to distinguish between presumptively ancestral diploid its allo- autopolyploid derivatives, a...