Plants tend to hoard DNA, not throwing anything out. The extra genes they hold inside can mutate to produce new physical traits. Holding onto the extra genes increases the tempo of evolution for the ...

Gymnosperm means “naked seed” and comes from the same Greek root as gymnastics, which means to exercise naked. This group of plants is so named because the seeds are not enclosed inside an ovary, ...

Determining the major drivers of species diversification and phenotypic innovation across the Tree of Life is one of the grand challeges in evolutionary biology. Facilitated by the Germplasm Bank of ...

This is a preview. Log in through your library . Abstract The role of polyploidy in gymnosperms has been evaluated. Polyploidy is found in the progeny of diploid species, in stray trees of otherwise ...

The Sago palm, Cycas revoluta, of course, is not a palm at all, but a gymnosperm, and thus more closely related to pine trees than palms. The botanist in me wants to remind you that gymnosperms are an ...

For many years, Charles Darwin was haunted by flowers. In 1859, the naturalist published his most famous work, On the Origin of Species, the book that is generally regarded as the foundation of ...

Raúl Contreras-Medina, Isolda Luna Vega and Juan J. Morrone Distributional patterns of 81 species of three genera of Mexican gymnosperms (Ceratozamia, Dioon, Pinus) were analyzed to evaluate their ...

ARGUABLY the world’s weirdest plant, Welwitschia mirabilis is a tangled mass of shredded, fraying leaves in the Namib desert. For a thousand years, perhaps more, it grows just two long leaves, which ...

Gymnosperms (Gymnospermae) are a group of seed-bearing plants with ovules borne on the edge or blade of an open sporophyll, the sporophylls usually arranged in cone-like structures. The other major ...