In sexually polymorphic plant species the extent of gender divergence in floral morphology and phenology may be influenced by gender-specific selection patterns imposed by pollinators, which may change geographically. Distribution margins are areas where changes in the pollinator fauna, and thus variation in gender divergence of floral traits, are expected. We tested for pollination-driven geog...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Bird-pollinated (ornithophilous) Salvia species (sages) transfer pollen either by means of a staminal lever mechanism or by immovable stamens. As the distribution of the two modes within the genus is not known, we present a survey of all ornithophilous sages. The main focus is given to floral diversity especially with respect to functional lever morphology. Thereby the hypot...

Forest trees display a perennial growth behavior characterized by a multiple-year delay in flowering and, in temperate regions, an annual cycling between growth and dormancy. We show here that the CO/FT regulatory module, which controls flowering time in response to variations in daylength in annual plants, controls flowering in aspen trees. Unexpectedly, however, it also controls the short-day...

The remarkably low alkaloid content of whole tobacco shoots grown as scions on rootstocks of lowalkaloid species has been recorded by many investigators (cf. Dawson (5), James (8), and Mothes (10) for reviews). Although the data of Tso and Jeffrey (14) appeared to be in contradiction, the disagreement has since been resolved (see below). Solt (13) demonstrated that low alkaloid content in this ...

In many woody plants, shoots emerging from buds can develop as short or long shoots. The probability of a bud to develop as a long or short shoot relies upon genetic, environmental and management factors and controlling it is an important issue in commercial orchard. We use peach (Prunus persicae) trees, subjected to different winter pruning levels and monitored for two years, to develop and ca...

WHEN a piece of a stem is cut out from a plant one or more new shoots will usually arise at the apical, and roots at the basal end of the piece. This phenomenon of axial polarity was explained by the older botanists as being due to a flow of shoot-forming substances to the apex and of root-forming sulbstances to the base. The gathering of these substances at opposite ends of the piece was belie...

Dormancy Associated MADS-box genes are SVP/MADs-box members and supposed to play crucial roles in plant dormancy of perennial species. In Prunus mume, PmDAM6 has been previously identified to induce plant dormancy. In the current study, six PmDAMs were cloned in P. mume and functionally analyzed in yeast and tobacco to detect the roles of the genes paralogous to PmDAM6. The expression patterns ...

Bud break and height-growth of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) in the northern boreal zone in Lapland, Finland, was followed through the entire growing seasons in the periods 2001-2003 and 2008-2010 in sapling stands in two different locations in northern Finland set some 250 km apart along a latitudinal transect. Field measurements continued at the southern site also in 2011-2013. Air tempera...

Two basic experiments defined a long-day inhibitory effect on Xanthium flowering: the basal half of a single leaf on long day inhibits response of the tip half to a short day; and a long-day leaf inhibits response of a short-day leaf, providing it is between the short-day leaf and a receptive bud (whether above or below the short-day leaf). Five hypotheses were explored with the conclusions tha...