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Background A critical analysis was made of cucurbit descriptions in Dioscorides' De Materia Medica, Columella's De Re Rustica and Pliny's Historia Naturalis, works on medicine, agriculture and natural science of the 1st century CE, as well as the Mishna and Tosefta, compilations of rabbinic law derived from the same time period together with cucurbit images dating from antiquity including paintings, mosaics and sculpture. The goal was to identify taxonomically the Mediterranean cucurbits at the time of the Roman Empire. † Findings By ancient times, long-fruited forms of Cucumis melo (melon) and Lagenaria siceraria (bottle gourd) were selected, cultivated and used as vegetables around the Mediterranean and, in addition, bottle-shaped fruits of L. siceraria were employed as vessels. Citrullus lanatus (watermelons) and round-fruited forms of Cucumis melo (melons) were also consumed, but less commonly. A number of cucurbit species, including Bryonia alba, B. dioica, Citrullus colocynthis and Ecballium elaterium, were employed for medicinal purposes. No unequivocal evidence was found to suggest the presence of Cucumis sativus (cucumber) in the Mediterranean area during this era. The cucumis of Columella and Pliny was not cucumber, as commonly translated, but Cucumis melo subsp. melo Flexuosus Group (snake melon or vegetable melon).

a large group of previously unknown Eriobotrya plants were found in the Dadu River Valley, located on the southern slopes of the mountain Gongga in western Sichuan and named E. prinoides Rehd. & Wils var. daduneensis H. Z. Zhang (Zhang et al. 1990). The Dadu River Valley is now considered the center of origin for the genus Eriobotrya in China, and a great number of indigenous communities of E. japonica, E. prinoides, and E. prinoides var. daduneensis are distributed in the middle and lower reaches of the river valley (Zhang et al. 1990).People beyond eastern Asia first learned of the loquat from Kaempfer, who observed it in Japan and described it in Amoenites Exotica in 1712, while the Swedish botanist, Thunberg, in Flora Japonica (1784), provided a more ample description of loquat under the name Mespilus japonica. In 1784, the loquat was introduced from Guangdong into the National Garden at Paris, and in 1787 was introduced into the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, England (Condit 1915;Liu 1982). From this beginning, loquat was distributed around the Mediterranean to various countries, including Algeria, Cyprus

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The termination of the life cycle of annual and biennial plants is sudden and complete. Entire fields of grains and other annual crops die sinmultaneously, often in the early part of the growing season. Neitlher the function nor the physiological basis for this senescence is understood.Plant senescence has received little attention since the publication of a small, perceptive book by Molisch (6)

Cuttings of a clone of A. annua L. (Asteraceae), grown under 16 h photoperiod for 55 days were transferred to six photoperiod treatments in the greenhouse. Under short photoperiods (8, 10, or 12 h), plants flowered after two weeks; plants under long photoperiods (16, 20, or 24 h) remained vegetative until termination of treatment after 10 weeks. When plants grown under long photoperiod treatments were transferred to 8-h photoperiod, flowering occurred 2 weeks later. Flower induction in plants grown under field conditions occurred when the photoperiod was determined to the 13.3 h. Artemisinin levels in all studies were found to be highest at anthesis. Artemisinin content was 4- to 11-fold higher in inflorescences than in leaves.