Title
Pollination-related functions of decorative sterile flowers of nine japanese hydrangea species (Hydrangeaceae)
Date Issued
01 January 2019
Access level
metadata only access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Publisher(s)
Canadian Science Publishing
Abstract
Most species of Hydrangea (Hydrangeaceae) have a flower arrangement in which several large sterile decorative flowers surround a dense cluster of small fertile flowers. These decorative flowers have been hypothesized to attract pollinators, but this has yet to be tested for this genus. To identify whether the decorative flowers have functions related to pollination success, we carried out field manipulation experiments in which we clipped or mounted decorative flowers of nine Hydrangea species, eight with and one without inherent decorative flowers, and recorded insect visits to the intact and treated inflorescences. The results showed that for most of the studied species, the presence of decorative flowers increased the frequency of visits and weakly increased the frequency of visits per unit area to inflorescences. Decorative flowers appeared to act as landing-sites for three species for which flowers represented a high proportion of the inflorescence surface area (i.e., H. scandens, H. luteovenosa, and H. macrophylla). The results suggest that the main function of decorative flowers of the studied Hydrangea species is to boost attractiveness to pollinators by increasing the inflorescence surface area, whereas the landing-site function was evident only in certain species.
Start page
521
End page
528
Volume
97
Issue
10
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Ciencias de las plantas, Botánica
Subjects
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-85072988771
Source
Botany
ISSN of the container
19162804
Sponsor(s)
We thank Yume Imada, Ingeborg Andrews, and Mariana Will for their valuable contributions to this paper, and the associate editor and anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions. This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant No. 22247003 and 15H02420 granted to Makoto Kato.
Sources of information:
Directorio de Producción Científica
Scopus