Abstract
MANY insect-pollinated flowers have nectar guides1 which increase the foraging and pollination efficiency of their insect visitors2. Some of these are visible only by their contrasting ultraviolet patterns, visible to insects but not to humans3. In such flowers, the nectar guides absorb ultraviolet light, and the compounds responsible were early suspected to be phenolics4. Recently, in Rudbeckia hirta L. (Asteraceae), a mixture of methylated flavonol glycosides has been shown to be responsible5. We report here that another class of flavonoids, chalcones, is responsible for the similar patterns in Oenothera (Fig. 1) and in three other genera of Onagraceae with flowers that appear uniformly yellow to humans.
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DEMENT, W., RAVEN, P. Pigments responsible for ultraviolet patterns in flowers of Oenothera (Onagraceae). Nature 252, 705–706 (1974). https://doi.org/10.1038/252705a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/252705a0
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