Investigation on the pollen morphology of traditional cultivars of Prunus species in Sicily

Abstract

In this study pollen grains of 13 cultivars and 3 rootstocks belonging to 5 species (P. armeniaca, P. domestica, P. dulcis, P. persica, P. avium) of the genus Prunus collected from North-East Sicily were examined for the micromorphological characterization through the scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The length of polar axis (P) and the equatorial diameter (E) of grain, P/E ratio, the length of colpi (C), diameter of perforations (DP) and the number of perforations in 25 µm 2 (PN), the width of muri (WM), the distance between muri (DM) and their number in 25 µm 2 (MN), the width of grooves (WG) were measured and their variation was compared among studied taxa. Moreover multivariate statistical analysis was carried out to distinguish morphometric information from measured parameters. All pollen grains are trizonocolpate, isopolar, medium-large sized and their shape varies from prolate to perprolate. Regarding outline pollen grains are subtriangular in polar view and elliptic in equatorial view. Exine sculpturing is striate with perforations on grain surface. The arrangement of ridges appears roughly parallel but too sloped (sometimes curved) compared to polar axis, or branched and oriented in different directions, or perfectly parallel or more irregular with bifurcated ridges often sinuous. The analyses showed a great variability (particularly in P. domestica cultivars) related in some cases to the diversity in the morphological features of the leaves and the fruits of the investigated entities. Keywords: pollen morphology, SEM, Sicilian Prunus, species, cultivarsActa Societatis Botanicorum Poloniae

Morphology and Pollen Chemistry of Several Bee Forage Taxa of Family Rosaceae from Garhwal Himalaya, Uttarakhand, India

“…The morphological characters of pollen from genera Prunus and Pyrus showed a prolatespheroidal shape class. A similar pollen shape class was observed by Fogle (1977) and Geraci et al (2012). A prolate shape was observed by Chwil (2015) Zuraw et al (2015), who had found that Rosa pollen size ranged from 29.2-34.2 µm in polar and 29.4-33.5 in equatorial view, tricolporate aperture and striate exine.…”

Floral organogenesis of Prunus laurocerasus and P. serotina and its significance for the systematics of the genus and androecium diversity in Rosaceae

“…Flowers and inflorescences have important taxonomic value, and their developmental process contains abundant information for systematics and evolutionary studies (Endress 2011). Previous studies on Prunus have focused on its anatomy (Sterling 1953a(Sterling , b, 1964Haskell and Dow 1955;Endress and Stumpf 1991;Zhang 1992;Chin et al 2013), palynology (Hebda et al 1991;Geraci et al 2012;Shi et al 2013), paleontology (DeVore andPigg 2007;Benedict et al 2011;Li et al 2011), phylogenetics, and phylogeography (Bortiri et al 2002;Wen et al 2008;Chin et al 2010Chin et al , 2014Liu et al 2013;Zhao et al 2016). Evans and Dickinson (1999a) compared the inflorescence and floral development of P. virginiana (subg.…”

Combined LM and SEM study of the middle Miocene (Sarmatian) palynoflora from the Lavanttal Basin, Austria: part IV. Magnoliophyta 2 – Fagales to Rosales

“…The subfamily Dryadoideae has been studied by Hebda et al (1988b) and Beug (2004). The pollen of the subfamily Spiraeoideae has been studied by Huang (1972), Hebda et al (1988aHebda et al ( , 1988b, Jones et al (1995), Wang et al (1995), Beug (2004), Bednorz et al (2005), Dönmez (2008), Joneghani (2008), Sorkheh et al (2008), Vafadar et al (2010), Zamani et al (2010), Li et al (2011a), Miyoshi et al (2011), Geraci et al (2012, Ćalić et al (2013), Shi et al (2013) and Perveen and Qaiser (2014). Based on these studies, the Rosaceae pollen grains from Lavanttal can be affiliated with Prunus.…”