For most angiosperms, producing and maintaining flowers is critical to sexual reproduction, yet little is known about the physiological processes involved in maintaining flowers throughout anthesis. Among extant species, flowers of the genus Calycanthus have the highest hydraulic conductance and vein densities of species measured to date, yet they can wilt by late morning under hot conditions. ...

Most plants are hermaphrodites, producing perfect flowers with both male and female functions. In roughly 6%of plants, however, male (usually XY) plants produce only male flowers and female (XX) plants produce only female flowers. Thesedioecious plants cannot self-pollinate, ensuring genetic diversity and facilitating the breeding process. In the dioecious diploid persimmon (Diospyros lotus), s...

The postharvest life of different cultivars of kalanchoë plants (Kalanchoë blossfeldiana Poelln.) varied widely. The display life of plants of ‘Nadia’ was much longer than that of plants of ‘Debbie’ (10 weeks compared with 7 weeks). During display life, senescing flowers were replaced by opening buds and the difference in display life was primarily a function of differences in life of the indiv...

Flowers bear the function of filters supporting the attraction of pollinators as well as the deterrence of floral antagonists. The effect of epidermal cell shape on the visual display and tactile properties of flowers has been evaluated only recently. In this study we quantitatively measured epidermal cell shape, gloss and spectral reflectance of flowers pollinated by either bees or birds testi...

Flowers for a gift are not only goods, but a medium carries a message to maintain social relationship between the sender and the receiver. Some flowers are welcome, and the others are not so, in association with whether the image of the sent flowers which come to the receiver's mind meets the human relationship or not, and is suited for the purpose or not. We developed a system aimed to incorpo...

Stem and leaf tissues of carnation (Dianthus caryophyllus) plants appear to contain a natural antisenescence factor since removal of most of these tissues from cut carnation flowers hastened their senescence. However, kinetin (5-10 mug/ml) significantly delayed senescence of flowers with stem and leaf tissues removed. In addition, the life span of cut flowers with intact (30-cm) stems was incre...