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Article: Floral shocker: blooms shake roots of flowering-plant family.(This Week)(Hydatella)
- Article from:
- Science News
- Article date:
- March 22, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2008 Science Service, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Imagine discovering a mammal without mammary glands or an insect with eight legs. Aquatic herbs in the genus Hydatella pose a similar paradox--they lack a defining developmental feature of flowering plants, raising questions about their evolution and rampant speciation during the past 135 million years.
Evolutionary biologists group together organisms that share unique traits, such as mammary glands or fur, which presumably emerged in a common ancestor. In the flowering plants--the angiosperms--these features include bearing true flowers and key events that occur during fertilization and development.
One such event is double fertilization. The plants' ...