—Fossil floras are an important source of quantitative terrestrial paleoclimate data. Many paleoclimate estimates are based on relationships observed in modern vegetation between leaf morphology and climate, such as the increase in the percentage of entire-margined species with increasing temperature and the increase in leaf size with increasing precipitation. An important question is whether t...

Leaves exhibit a wide range of form and function: as well as the flattened photosynthetic organs we are most familiar with, modifications of leaf morphology produce the rigid spines of cacti, the cup-shaped insect traps of pitcher plants, colorful flower parts such as petals and some of the tendrils used for attachment by climbing plants. One fundamental choice in leaf architecture is whether t...

We introduce a biologically motivated simulation technique for the realistic shape deformation of drying leaves. In contrast to skeleton-based leaf deformation, our approach simulates the whole leaf surface to capture the fine details of desiccated leaves. We represent a leaf as a triangulated double-layer structure that consists of a Delaunay triangulation discretized along the vein structure ...

In this study, the morphology, anatomy, pollen morphology, leaf and seed micromorphology and karyology of the Turkish endangered endemic Physoptychis haussknechtii were investigated in detail for the fi rst time. The species was studied in terms of detailed morphology. Basal leaves are narrowly spatulate and cauline leaves are linear to oblanceolate; both leaves are covered with fl attened stal...

Many different morphological characteristics were widely used by several Flora in preparing keys for taxonomic identification of the taxa in the genus Artemisia (Asteraceae). In the current work an intensive review was carried out on different Flora and published papers and literatures on applications of morphological qualitative characteristics in taxonomy of Artemisia, of which 17 widely used...

Plants have diversified their leaf morphologies to adapt to diverse ecological niches. The molecular components responsible for regulating leaf morphology, however, have not been fully elucidated. By screening Arabidopsis activation-tagging lines, we identified a dominant mutant, which we designated longifolia1-1D (lng1-1D). lng1-1D plants were characterized by long petioles, narrow but extreme...

Plastids in the leaf epidermal cells of plants are regarded as immature chloroplasts that, like mesophyll chloroplasts, undergo binary fission. While mesophyll chloroplasts have generally been used to study plastid division, recent studies have suggested the presence of tissue- or plastid type-dependent regulation of plastid division. Here, we report the detailed morphology of plastids and thei...

In response to predation pressure, some insects have developed spectacular plant mimicry strategies (homomorphy), involving important changes in their morphology. The fossil record of plant mimicry provides clues to the importance of predation pressure in the deep past. Surprisingly, to date, the oldest confirmed records of insect leaf mimicry are Mesozoic. Here we document a crucial step in th...

In many plant species, the degree of serration and complexity in successive leaves increases. A new study suggests that small-RNA-mediated licensing of competitive interactions between transcription factors links the developmental clock regulating vegetative phase change with leaf morphology.