Flowering Lines

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1925.

The onset of flowering is an important step during the lifetime of a flowering plant. During the past two decades, there has been enormous progress in our understanding of how internal and external (environmental) cues control the transition to reproductive growth in plants. Many flowering time regulators have been identified from the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. Most of them are assembled in regulatory pathways, which converge to central integrators which trigger the transition of the vegetative into an inflorescence meristem. For crop cultivation, the time of flowering is of upmost importance, because it determines yield. Phenotypic variation for this trait is largely controlled by genes, which were often modified during domestication or crop improvement. Understanding the genetic basis of flowering time regulation offers new opportunities for selection in plant breeding and for genome editing and genetic modification of crop species.

These volumes are an exhaustive source of information on the control and regulation of flowering. They present data on the factors controlling flower induction and how they may be affected by climate and chemical treatments. For each plant, specific information is provided on all aspects of flower development, including sex expression, requirements for flowering initiation and development, photoperiod, light density, vernalization, and other temperature effects and interactions. Individual species are described from the standpoint of juvenility and maturation, morphology, induction and morphogenesis to anthesis. All information is presented alphabetically for easy reference

The European Garden Flora is the definitive manual for the accurate identification of cultivated ornamental flowering plants. Designed to meet the highest scientific standards, the vocabulary has nevertheless been kept as uncomplicated as possible so that the work is fully accessible to the informed gardener as well as to the professional botanist. This new edition has been thoroughly reorganised and revised, bringing it into line with modern taxonomic knowledge. Although European in name, the Flora covers plants cultivated in most areas of the United States and Canada as well as in non-tropical parts of Asia and Australasia. Volume 2 contains accounts of the first 71 families of Dicotyledons, including the Aizoaceae and Cactaceae (large and important families of succulents), as well as many tree families (Juglandaceae, Betulaceae, Fagaceae, Ulmaceae) and popular herbaceous plants (Ranunculaceae, Papaveraceae, Cruciferae).

Beverley Glover provides an overview of the biology of flowers and considers how plants decide when to make flowers and how floral organs develop. She looks at why different shapes and colours exist, relating floral development to pollination biology.

The flowering plants now dominate the terrestrial ecosystems of theplanet, and there are good reasons for supposing that the floweritself has been a major contributing factor to the spread of theAngiosperms. The flowers of higher plants not only contain theorgans of plant reproduction but are of fundamental importance ingiving rise to fruits and seeds which constitute a major componentof the human diet. This volume opens with a chapter describing a model for theevolution of the Angiosperm flower. Chapters 2 to 5 describe thecore development of the flower and include floral induction, floralpattering and organ initiation, floral shape and size, andinflorescence architecture. Chapters 6 to 8 focus on morespecialised aspects of floral development: monoecy, cytoplasmicmale sterility and flowering in perennials. Chapters 9 and 10address more functional aspects: flower colour and scent. The bookconcludes, appropriately, with a chapter on flowersenescence. Applied aspects are stressed wherever appropriate, and the book isdirected at researchers and professionals in plant genetics,developmental and molecular biology. The volume has been designed to complement an earlier volume in ourAnnual Plant Reviews series, O'Neill, S. D. and Roberts, J. A.(2002) Plant Reproduction.