Annals of Botany 72: 27-36, 1993
© 1993 Annals of Botany Company
Homeotic, Meristic and Cytological Floral Mutants of Thryptomene calycina (family Myrtaceae)
Department of Agriculture Victoria, Institute for Horticulture Development, Private Bag 15, South Eastern Mail Centre, Victoria 3176, Australia; Department of Botany, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602, USA and Department of Botany, University of Melbourne, Parkville, 3152, Australia
Twenty plants with various phenotypic abnormalities to the flowers were selected from very large populations of Thryptomene calycina in the Grampian and Black Ranges. Most of these had impaired reproductive function. Normal flowers were epigynous with five sepals, five petals, five anthers, a single style and two anatropous ovules. The mutants were two partially male sterile, tetraploid plants with large flowers, one of which occasionally produced additional flowers from the leaf axils with peduncles as well as pedicels; one plant which produced a proportion of hexapetaloid flowers with six stamens; three gross mutants with fleshy, bracteoid pointed petals and sepals, no stamens, vestigial styles and stigmas, exposed ovules and no inferior ovary; one plant with fleshly, bracteoid pointed sepals, vestigial style and stigma but with exposed ovular structures replaced by four to five sterile ovules generally inside an abnormal ovary; two plants with reduced ovary diameter and sterile ovules, shortened style, five reduced sepals and petals and five to eight anthers; three anthocyanin-free plants; three plants with pink sepals; two plants with half-sized flowers which produced a proportion of fasciated stems; one plant which occasionally produced flowers without pedicels which virtually resulted in organs which were leaf-flower composites; two plants which produced sepals and petals which contained chlorophyll and prematurely senesced, and had partial substitution of petals by anthers.Copyright 1993, 1999 Academic Press
Thryptomene calycina, Myrtaceae, Victorian lace flower, floral mutations, mutants, homeotic, meristic, tetraploid, fasciation, male sterility, cut flowers