Divergent selection may have driven the calyx lobe length variation in series Sakawanum taxa, although the underlying mechanism is still not clear.

These findings imply that storage in herbs is probably governed by factors other than just the disturbance regime applied once in a growing season.

The underlying genetic causes of the switch to apomixes are not yet fully understood, but in Hypericum there is good evidence for the existence of ‘apomictic factors’.

Climatic changes and historical orogenies during the Quaternary might have played a significant role in determining the speciation and diversification patterns of primroses in Japan.

These findings highlight that canonical N:P thresholds have the potential to introduce a large uncertainty when used to detect plant nutrient limitations, suggesting that the error risks should be cautioned in future studies.

This study reinforces the antiquity of insect–plant pollination mutualisms in Gnetophyta, which have a fossil record beginning in the Triassic.

The salvage pathway that recycles rRNA is shown to be important in maintaining normal nucleoside levels and cellular homeostasis in plants.

Fruit ripening overlaps with flowering, leading to a severe reproductive burden on the hermaphroditic individuals.

Codon usage bias (also known as codon bias) is the selective use of nucleotide triplets (codons) to encode specific amino acid sequences in the protein coding genes of a species. Every amino acid in a sequence can be encoded by one (in the case of methionine and tryptophan) to six different codons. The frequencies with […]

Ecological factors affect the distribution of plant architectural diversity and shape its evolution, and future work integrating phylogenetically informed architectural data with ecological variables will continue to unveil how plant architecture is shaped at a global scale.

Separate sexes and biased sex ratios are common in bryophytes, yet little is known about how fine-scale, sex-specific morphological traits are correlated with physiology and population sex-ratios. Slate et al. analysed cellular, leaf, and canopy traits and photochemical measurements in the dioecious moss Ceratodon purpureus. Male and female plants differed in cell, leaf and photochemical […]

The shoot apical meristem (SAM) is the key organizing element of the plant body. Surprisingly, there are almost no across-species comparative data showing links between the SAM and whole-plant traits such as leaf size, stem diameter or seed mass. Schnablová et al. show that such relationships do exist, and moreover, that as a result of […]