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Tag: "flowers" at biology news

Columbine flowers develop long nectar spurs in response to pollinators

In flowers called columbines, evolution of the length of nect...ng to plants' nectar--happens in a way that allows flowers to match the tongue lengths of the pollinators that drink their nectar, biologists have found. The ...

The kapok connection -- Study explains rainforest similarities

...g, its head poking above the forest canopy. Its flowers produce more than 50 gallons of nectar per tree in a season, attracting bats that travel as far as 12 miles between trees and transfer pollen in the process. When the seed pods ripen, they break open to reveal fluffy fibers that are used to stuff pil...

Researchers demonstrate way to control tree height

...lt to even find, tiny little “shrublets” among the flowers in the field site. The manipulation of height growth was achieved by insertion of certain genes, mostly taken from the model plant Arabidopsis, which inhibited the action of a class of plant-specific hormones known as gibberellic acids. These comp...

8 plants from South Africa may hold potential for treating high blood pressure

... Ceratotheca triloba, a tall annual plant that flowers in summer sometimes referred to as poppy sue Chenopodium album, also called lamb's quarters, this is a weedy annual plant Emex australis, commonly known as southern three corner jack Galinsoga parviflora, commonly referred to as gallan...

Detecting poisons in nectar is an odour-ous task for honeybees

Though many spring flowers have bright advertisements offering sweet rewards to honeybees, some common flowers have not-so-sweet or even toxic nectars. Why plants would try to poison the honeybees they wish to a...

UBC researchers reveal dwarf aquatic plants' hidden ancestry

...2 centimetres in height, and have dozens of minute flowers clustered into each compact flower head. Native to Australia, New Zealand and India, they thrive in seasonal freshwater pools and swamps, and may blossom underwater at depths of up to one metre, or as the pools dry out. "For more than a centur...

Scientists unlock secret of what makes plants flower

...he likely mechanism by which the Arabidopsis plant flowers in response to changes in day length. Earlier research had shown that plants' leaves perceived seasonal changes in day length, which triggers a long-distance signal to travel through the plant's vascular system from the leaf to the shoot apex, where ...

Brown team finds crucial protein role in deadly prion spread

...on," Serio said. "A dandelion head is a cluster of flowers that each carries a seed. When the flower dries up and the wind blows, the seeds disperse. Prion protein works the same way. Hsp104 acts like the wind, blowing apart the flower and spreading the seeds." Serio said that prions still multiply withou...

How did bilaterally symmetric flowers evolve from radially symmetric ones?

How did bilaterally symmetric flowers evolve from radially symmetric ones? To address th... found that plants bearing bilaterally symmetrical flowers were more visited by pollinators and had higher fitness, measured by both the number of seeds produc...

Found -- the apple gene for red

...ounds responsible for blue and red colours in many flowers and fruits," says the leader of the CSIRO Plant Industry research team, Dr Mandy Walker. "Colour is a very important part of fruit marketing," she says. "If fruit doesn't look good, consumers are far less likely to buy it, no matter how good it mig...

Parasitic plants sniff out hosts

...lants have no roots and barely have leaves and the flowers are very tiny," says Mark C. Mescher, assistant professor of entomology. First the researchers placed dodder seedlings in a water vial at the center of a filter paper disk. A tomato plant was placed near the edge of the disk and the dodder plant w...

Researchers find that bumblebees' flower choice matters

...len ?which plant species the bees forage on, which flowers they probe and in what order, and how many blooms ...h paternity, Karron has demonstrated that adjacent flowers differ markedly in their mating patterns. "It's amazing what we've found," he says. "When a bee visi...

Important gene controlling tree growth and development found

... a few weeks. After a few months completely normal flowers are formed. It is also shown that the poplar FT gene is turned off in late summer just before the trees stop growing and set bud. By changing the activity of the FT gene the scientists could either prolong or shorten the growing season of the tree. ...

Scientists discover that ancient genes dictate flowering, fall bud set

...s over expressed FT in poplar, and observed normal flowers on six month old trees -- in a tree species that ordinarily takes 8 to 20 years to flower. Why does it take trees so many years to flower? Brunner and Strauss -- who have been doing research to make genetically engineered trees sterile so that they ...

Researchers offer clues to how leaves patterns are formed

...leaves on this, more branches on this one or fewer flowers on this plant." ...

Genetic snooze button governs timing of spring flowers

...ividing cells differentiate into shoots, roots and flowers - is rendered competent to flower. In a series of studies of Arabidopsis, a small mustard plant commonly used to study plant genetics, Amasino and his colleagues have found there are certain critical genes that repress flowering. "The plants we'v...

Wild bees and the flowers they pollinate are disappearing together

The diversity of bees and of the flowers they pollinate, has declined significantly in Brit...rs are essential for the reproduction of many wild flowers and crops. Co-author Simon Potts (of the University of Reading) said: "The economic value of pollina...

UC San Diego biologists solve plant growth hormone enigma

...had developmental defects. The defects, including flowers with missing or misshapen parts, or deformations i...ilization has taken place." Applying auxin to the flowers by hand can also induce seedless tomatoes, or other seedless fruit, but this method is too tedious t...

Plant-derived vaccines safeguard against deadly plague

...lant disease and can damage and mottle the leaves, flowers and fruits of whole crops. In the system, TMV is simply injected into the leaves of the tobacco plants. Like most crops, producing vaccines in tobacco plants primarily revolved around issues of speed, low cost and high yield. "The major advantage ...

A new way of looking at molecular motors

... a head at each end, and dyneins like three-headed flowers with one stem. Soldati and Foth have confirmed that the motor neck and tail evolved together. That finding helped them define some of their new categories. Organisms employ all three types of motors at the same time, but in different proportions. F...

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