Distyly

Distyly is a type of heterostyly in which a plant demonstrates reciprocal herkogamy. This breeding system is characterized by two separate flower morphs, where individual plants produce flowers that either have long styles and short stamens (L-morph flowers), or that have short styles and long stamens (S-morph flowers).[1] However, distyly can refer to any plant that shows some degree of self-incompatibility and has two morphs if at least one of the following characteristics is true; there is a difference in style length, filament length, pollen size or shape, or the surface of the stigma.[2] Specifically these plants exhibit intra-morph self-incompatibility, flowers of the same style morph are incompatible.[3] Distylous species that do not exhibit true self-incompatibility generally show a bias towards inter-morph crosses - meaning they exhibit higher success rates when reproducing with an individual of the opposite morph.[4]

Diagram of both distylous morphs
Example of distyly in Primula. A. L-morph (pin), B. S-morph (thrum) 1. petal. 2 sepal. 3 anther. 4 pistil.
  1. ^ Lewis D (1942). "The Physiology of Incompatibility in Plants. I. The Effect of Temperature". Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences. 131 (862): 13–26. Bibcode:1942RSPSB.131...13L. doi:10.1098/rspb.1942.0015. ISSN 0080-4649. JSTOR 82364. S2CID 84753102.
  2. ^ Muenchow G (August 1982). "A loss-of-alleles model for the evolution of distyly". Heredity. 49 (1): 81–93. doi:10.1038/hdy.1982.67. ISSN 0018-067X.
  3. ^ Barrett SC, Cruzan MB (1994). "Incompatibility in heterostylous plants". Genetic control of self-incompatibility and reproductive development in flowering plants. Advances in Cellular and Molecular Biology of Plants. Vol. 2. Springer Netherlands. pp. 189–219. doi:10.1007/978-94-017-1669-7_10. ISBN 978-90-481-4340-5.
  4. ^ Shao JW, Wang HF, Fang SP, Conti E, Chen YJ, Zhu HM (June 2019). "Intraspecific variation of self-incompatibility in the distylous plant Primula merrilliana". AoB Plants. 11 (3): plz030. doi:10.1093/aobpla/plz030. PMC 6557196. PMID 32489575.