“Information on the function of floral traits and the pollinators is often missing,” said a German biologist in a lecture about developmental problems in pollination of interrelated flowers last January 9 at the Thomas Aquinas Research Complex.
Dr. Ulrich Meve, a professor of the Department of Plant Systematics from Bayreuth University in Bavaria, Germany, explained the several aspects on the systematics of Apocynaceae-Asclepiadoideae plants.
Homoiologies of plants, according to Meve, “is the parallel development of a characteristic which has not been inherited from a common ancestor, but which has developed on the same morphological basis within a group of related plants”.
Data from several studies unmasked flower homoiology within their subtribes, Meve said.
“This makes dissimilarities of flowers as misleading as similarities,” said Meve. Vegetative characteristics can be much more reliable for such kind of parallelisms is not rare to succulent stems under the plant family.
Meve also described each of the tribe of Apocynaceae-Asclepiadoideae. Though all of them have white latex or plant sap, differences arise from leaf organization or corona and other physical characteristics. With only two reported kinds in East Africa and Arabia, one subtribe has tuberous roots. Another tribe is characterized to be shrubs, herbs, twiners, or any plant with succulent leaves and simple corona patterns. Another tribe, with subgroups by locations and other modified features, is also composed of shrubs, herbs, twiners, and succulents, only, they have clear latex. Laurence John R. Morales and Jianne d.L. Yamzon
