Being rooted, plants have very little opportunity to travel. They can as pollen to find a mate, and also as seeds. In the case of Cardamine hirsuta, that travel is explosive. The plant stores energy in the pericarp of...
Tag - seed coat
Fi Gennu
Pea seed testa and its role during the establishment of physical dormancy
A water-impermeable testa may act as a barrier to seed imbibition, imposing dormancy. Janská et al. test six pea accessions of contrasting dormancy type for their ability to imbibe. The strophiole is identified as the...
Alex Assiry
AJ Cann
Peroxidase allows germination of proanthocyanidin-deficient arabidopsis seeds
A comparison of wild-type Arabidopsis thaliana and PA-deficient mutants finds that peroxidase activity is significantly over-activated in mutant seeds.
When physics meets botany…
This column is always fascinated by the way new insights arise when different disciplines are brought together to tackle an ostensibly botanical problem. So, too, is the UK’s Royal Society, hence its august organ...
Nigel Chaffey
Host-plant stimulation of germination in parasitic Phelipanche
The tiny seeds of the obligate root parasitic plants of the Orobanchaceae do not germinate unless they detect chemical signals from a host plant. Joel et al. study seed ultrastructure and find that mucilage swelling in...
botanyone
Physical dormancy and the water gap in Geranium
Physical dormancy and the water gap in <i>Geranium</i> A water gap is a small opening that forms on breaking of dormancy in physically dormant seeds or fruits. Gama-Arachchige et al. examine the development...
Hourglass cell development in soybean seed coat
Hourglass cells (HGC) are prominent cells in the legume seed coat. Miller et al. (pp. 235–242) document HGC development in soybean, Glycine max, and relate structural changes to expression of an HGC-specific soybean...
