Gardener’s Delight Offers Glimpse into the Evolution of Flowering Plants
The Pink Double Dandy peony, the Double Peppermint petunia, the Doubled Strawberry Vanilla lily and nearly all roses are varieties cultivated for their double flowers. (more…)
Tag Archives: flowering plants
It’s in the Genes: Research Pinpoints How Plants Know When to Flower
Scientists believe they’ve pinpointed the last crucial piece of the 80-year-old puzzle of how plants “know” when to flower. (more…)
Hacking Code of Leaf Vein Architecture Solves Mysteries, Allows Predictions of Past Climate
UCLA life scientists have discovered new laws that determine the construction of leaf vein systems as leaves grow and evolve. These easy-to-apply mathematical rules can now be used to better predict the climates of the past using the fossil record.
The research, published May 15 in the journal Nature Communications, has a range of fundamental implications for global ecology and allows researchers to estimate original leaf sizes from just a fragment of a leaf. This will improve scientists’ prediction and interpretation of climate in the deep past from leaf fossils.
Leaf veins are of tremendous importance in a plant’s life, providing the nutrients and water that leaves need to conduct photosynthesis and supporting them in capturing sunlight. Leaf size is also of great importance for plants’ adaptation to their environment, with smaller leaves being found in drier, sunnier places. (more…)
NASA Map Sees Earth’s Trees in a New Light
PASADENA, Calif. – A NASA-led science team has created an accurate, high-resolution map of the height of Earth’s forests. The map will help scientists better understand the role forests play in climate change and how their heights influence wildlife habitats within them, while also helping them quantify the carbon stored in Earth’s vegetation.
Scientists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.; the University of Maryland, College Park; and Woods Hole Research Center, Falmouth, Mass., created the map using 2.5 million carefully screened, globally distributed laser pulse measurements from space. The light detection and ranging (lidar) data were collected in 2005 by the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System instrument on NASA’s Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat). (more…)
UF Researchers Help Pinpoint Key Events in Ancient Plant Evolution
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Researchers from the University of Florida and six other institutions have unlocked some of the key foundations for the evolution of seed and flowering plants. (more…)
UF Pine lsland Pollen Study Leads to Revision of State’s Ancient Geography
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A new University of Florida study of 45-million-year-old pollen from Pine Island west of Fort Myers has led to a new understanding of the state’s geologic history, showing Florida could be 10 million to 15 million years older than previously believed.
The discovery of land in Florida during the early Eocene opens the possibility for researchers to explore the existence of land animals at that time, including their adaptation, evolution and dispersal until the present. (more…)
What “Pine” Cones Reveal About the Evolution of Flowers
*Research genetically traces flowers to a single common ancestor*
From southern Africa’s pineapple lily to Western Australia’s swamp bottlebrush, flowering plants are everywhere. Also called angiosperms, they make up 90 percent of all land-based, plant life.
New research published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides new insights into their genetic origin, an evolutionary innovation that quickly gave rise to many diverse flowering plants more than 130 million years ago. Moreover, a flower with genetic programming similar to a water lily may have started it all. (more…)