In this paper, we demonstrate how deformation patterns of leaves and fruits in growing and drying processes can be described via the inhomogeneous field theory. The distorted deformation of ribbed leaves and the ridge formation on fruit surfaces can be understood as the energy-minimizing mechanical buckling patterns. The swelling and de-swelling induced instabilities of various membrane structu...

Plants in the desert may locally change the aeolian process, and hence the pattern of sand ripples traveling nearby. The effect of plants on ripples is investigated using a coupled map lattice model with nonuniform coupling coefficients.

A fundamental question in developmental biology is how spatial patterns are self-organized from homogeneous structures. In 1952, Turing proposed the reaction-diffusion model in order to explain this issue. Experimental evidence of reaction-diffusion patterns in living organisms was first provided by the pigmentation pattern on the skin of fishes in 1995. However, whether or not this mechanism p...

Vascular tissues, xylem and phloem, are differentiated from meristematic cells, procambium, and vascular cambium. Auxin and cytokinin have been considered essential for vascular tissue differentiation; this is supported by recent molecular and genetic analyses. Xylogenesis has long been used as a model for study of cell differentiation, and many genes involved in late stages of tracheary elemen...

The complete range of various phyllotaxes exemplified in aquatic plants provide an opportunity to characterize the fundamental geometrical relationships operating in leaf patterning. A new polar-coordinate model was used to characterize the correlation between the shapes of shoot meristems and the arrangements of young leaf primordia arising on those meristems. In aquatic plants, the primary ge...

Z. Naturforsch. 55 b, 459—461 (2000); received February 21, 2000 Biomineralization, Silica, Silicon-Accumulating Plants A series of silicon-accumulating plants [different Equisetum (horse tail) species, Echium vulgare, and Symphytum officinale] were studied by solid-state 29Si NMR experiments. For this purpose, selected parts of these plants were freeze-dried and then investigated by solid-stat...

Plants have evolved systems analogous to animal innate immunity that recognise pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs). PAMP detection is an important component of non-host resistance in plants and serves as an early warning system for the presence of potential pathogens. Binding of a PAMP to the appropriate pattern recognition receptor leads to downstream signalling events and, ultimate...