Sterile and fertile flowers are an important evolutionary developmental (evo-devo) phenotype in angiosperm flowers, playing important roles in pollinator attraction and sexual reproductive success. However, the gene regulatory mechanisms underlying fertile and sterile flower differentiation and development remain largely unknown. Viburnum macrocephalum f. keteleeri, which possesses fertile and ...

SHIMAMURA, R., N. KACHI (Department of Biological Sciences, Graduate School of Sciences, Tokyo Metropolitan University, Hachioji 192-0397, Japan), H. KUDOH (Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Kobe University, Kobe 657-8501, Japan), AND D. F. WHIGHAM (Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Edgewater, MD 21037). Visitation of a specialist pollen feeder Althaeus hibisci Olivier (Coleop...

Various colored cultivars of ornamental flowers have been bred by hybridization and mutation breeding; however, the generation of blue flowers for major cut flower plants, such as roses, chrysanthemums, and carnations, has not been achieved by conventional breeding or genetic engineering. Most blue-hued flowers contain delphinidin-based anthocyanins; therefore, delphinidin-producing carnation, ...

Early angiosperm evolution, beginning approximately 140 million years ago, saw many innovations that enabled flowering plants to alter ecosystems globally. These included the development of novel, flower-based pollinator attraction mechanisms and the development of increased water transport capacity in stems and leaves. Vein length per area (VLA) of leaves increased nearly threefold in the firs...

Zoophilous flowers often transmit olfactory signals to attract pollinators. In plants with unisexual flowers, such signals are usually similar between the sexes because attraction of the same animal to both male and female flowers is essential for conspecific pollen transfer. Here, we present a remarkable example of sexual dimorphism in floral signal observed in reproductively highly specialize...

Factors underlying apparent floral sexual dimorphism were examined in six species of andromonoecious Solanum section Lasiocarpa (Solanaceae). Both multivariate and univariate analyses show that hermaphroditic flowers are significantly larger than staminate flowers for all features measured. Thus, flowers could be characterized as sexually size dimorphic. However, when size variation due to flow...

Although the tremendous variability in floral colour among angiosperms is often attributed to divergent selection by pollinators, it is usually difficult to preclude the possibility that floral colour shifts were driven by non-pollinator processes. Here, we examine the adaptive significance of flower colour in Disa ferruginea, a non-rewarding orchid that is thought to attract its butterfly poll...

Many zoophilous plants attract their pollinators by offering nectar as a reward. In gynodioecious plants (i.e. populations are composed of female and hermaphrodite individuals) nectar production has been repeatedly reported to be larger in hermaphrodite compared to female flowers even though nectar production across the different floral phases in dichogamous plants (i.e. plants with time separa...

Climate change is causing many plants to flower earlier in spring, exposing them to novel selection pressures, including-potentially-pollinator shortages. Over 2 years that contrasted in timing of flowering onset, we studied reproductive strategies, pollen limitation, and selection on flowering time in Mertensia fusiformis, a self-incompatible, spring-flowering perennial. Plants opened most of ...

Distyly, a special polymorph, has evolved in many groups of angiosperms and has attracted attention since Darwin's time. Development studies on distylous taxa have helped us to understand the evolutionary process of this polymorph, but most of these studies focus on species with narrowly tubular corolla. Here, we studied the floral development of Polygonum jucundum, a distylous species with bro...