- Home
- Angry by Choice
- Catalogue of Organisms
- Chinleana
- Doc Madhattan
- Games with Words
- Genomics, Medicine, and Pseudoscience
- History of Geology
- Moss Plants and More
- Pleiotropy
- Plektix
- RRResearch
- Skeptic Wonder
- The Culture of Chemistry
- The Curious Wavefunction
- The Phytophactor
- The View from a Microbiologist
- Variety of Life
Field of Science
-
-
Calcium and Vitamin D Supplements Still Don't Work, New Study Says1 week ago in Genomics, Medicine, and Pseudoscience
-
-
-
-
The Site is Dead, Long Live the Site1 year ago in Catalogue of Organisms
-
The Site is Dead, Long Live the Site1 year ago in Variety of Life
-
-
Does mathematics carry human biases?3 years ago in PLEKTIX
-
-
-
-
A New Placodont from the Late Triassic of China5 years ago in Chinleana
-
Posted: July 22, 2018 at 03:03PM5 years ago in Field Notes
-
Bryophyte Herbarium Survey6 years ago in Moss Plants and More
-
Harnessing innate immunity to cure HIV7 years ago in Rule of 6ix
-
WE MOVED!7 years ago in Games with Words
-
-
-
-
post doc job opportunity on ribosome biochemistry!9 years ago in Protein Evolution and Other Musings
-
Growing the kidney: re-blogged from Science Bitez9 years ago in The View from a Microbiologist
-
Blogging Microbes- Communicating Microbiology to Netizens9 years ago in Memoirs of a Defective Brain
-
-
-
The Lure of the Obscure? Guest Post by Frank Stahl11 years ago in Sex, Genes & Evolution
-
-
Lab Rat Moving House12 years ago in Life of a Lab Rat
-
Goodbye FoS, thanks for all the laughs12 years ago in Disease Prone
-
-
Slideshow of NASA's Stardust-NExT Mission Comet Tempel 1 Flyby13 years ago in The Large Picture Blog
-
in The Biology Files
A plant pundit comments on plants, the foibles and fun of academic life, and other things of interest.
Rainforest Field Trip - Luscious Lips
On many occasions the Phactor has tried to illustrate the problem plants have in dispersal of their pollen and seeds. The basic rule is pretty simple: attracting dispersers requires a display, and the bigger the display the better the dispersal. Another problem is that flowers are often either too small or too ephemeral to make a large, long-lasting display, so very often bracts, modified leaves associated with flowers, are used to produce larger, long-lasting displays for many plants. Some of these displays last long enough to also serve in seed dispersal, and this pair of red bracts belonging to Psychotria poeppigiana in the coffee family, looking quite like a pair of luscious lips, lasts long enough that after attracting pollinators to the rather small white flowers, they attract seed-dispersers to the blue fruits. With only 1 fruit remaining, their job is about done, and the lips aren't looking so kissable.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Hooray!
Yes, the Phactor does requests, sometimes.
Post a Comment