Published in Flora
At a microscopic scale, the shape and fine cell relief of the petal epidermal cells of a flower play a key role in its interaction with pollinators. In particular, conical shaped petal epidermal cells have been shown to have an important function in providing grip on the surface of bee-pollinated flowers and can influence bee visitation rates. Prev...
Published in Flora
Cyperus fuscus is a representative of threatened ephemeral wetland plant communities in summer-dry shoreline habitats. We compared variation and plasticity in traits related to fitness and growth of plants germinating from the soil seed bank and established plants from river and secondary anthropogenic habitats. Plants from sites at rivers, fishpon...
Published in Flora
Canopy transpiration (Ec) of a 150-year old Pinus sylvestris L. stand in an inner alpine dry valley, Tyrol, Austria was estimated throughout two growing seasons 2011 and 2012 by means of xylem sap flow measurements. Although there were prolonged periods of limited soil water availability Ec did not show a clear trend with respect to soil water avai...
Published in Flora
Some salt-tolerant plants belonging to the Poaceae possess bicellular salt glands that excrete salt-containing water. To clarify the excretion process from the outer cell of the bicellular salt gland (cap cell), unwashed and washed fresh leaves of Rhodes grass (Chloris gayana Kunth), Poaceae, were cryo-fixed rapidly, and the surface fine structures...
Published in Flora
The degree of stability of the Cerrado following burning is widely discussed in literature. However, little is known about the effects of fire on the resilience of savanna formations from rocky outcrops, known as “cerrado rupestre”. We tested the hypothesis that floristic, structural, and dynamics parameters of a tree–shrub cerrado rupestre communi...
Published in Flora
Brazilian Campos grasslands are ecosystems under high frequency of disturbance by grazing and fires. Absence of such disturbances may lead to shrub encroachment and loss of plant diversity. Vegetation regeneration after disturbance in these grasslands occurs mostly by resprouting from belowground structures. We analyzed the importance of bud bank a...
Published in Flora
Fire disturbance alters the structural complexity of forests, above-ground biomass stocks and patterns of growth, recruitment and mortality that determine temporal dynamics of communities. These changes may alter also forest species composition, richness, and diversity. We compared changes in plant recruitment, mortality, and turnover time over thr...
Published in Flora
We tested the hypothesis that leaf epidermal pigments screen light of particular wavelengths from reaching the photosynthetic machinery, reducing dependence on the xanthophyll-cycle as an energy dissipation process. Under field conditions, photosynthesis and water relations were studied in two morphs of Agave striata that differ in leaf coloration ...
Published in Flora
The warming-induced increase in nutrient mineralization and the further increase in atmospheric nitrogen depositions raise the topic of whether and how alpine plants will react to enhanced nutrient availability. Despite several studies have shown the effects of fertilization on primary production of alpine plants, only few studies have considered t...
Published in Flora
Orchidaceae is one of the largest angiosperm families. Although extensively studied, reports of anatomy of secretory structures of orchids are relatively scarce. Rodriguezia venusta is an epiphytic orchid occurring in Brazil and Peru that has floral and extrafloral nectaries. This study describes the structure and the histochemistry of these secret...
