查看文章

How do these plants grow and disperse? Despite their ability to produce flowers and seeds, sexual reproduction in duckweeds is rare in nature, and they mainly reproduce through clonal budding, duplicating their biomass every 48–72 hours, which enables them to rapidly and completely cover the surface of their aquatic environment when conditions are favorable ( Figure 1C). One reason for the ability of duckweed to rapidly proliferate is due to a substantially reduced morphology and anatomy relative to other angiosperms. An individual consists of one leaf-like structure called the frond, which contains one or two pockets in which new clonal buds, termed ‘daughter fronds’, emerge from a sympodial meristem. A single mother frond can produce up to 18 daughter fronds during its life cycle, depending on the species. Anatomical reduction also plays a critical role in the dispersal of duckweeds. In contrast to most land …