Sexual interference between male and female function in hermaphrodite plants is reduced by protandry. In environments with insufficient pollinator service, prolongation of male function owing to limited pollen removal could restrict the duration of female function and lower seed production. We provide evidence that this form of sexual conflict has played a role in the spread of females in gynodioecious populations of Cyananthus delavayi in the pollen‐limited environments in which this subalpine species occurs. Using field experiments involving artificial pollen removal from the strongly protandrous flowers of hermaphrodites, we demonstrated a trade‐off between male‐ and female‐phase duration with no influence on overall floral longevity. Pollen removal at the beginning of anthesis resulted in hermaphrodite seed production matching that of females. In contrast, restricted pollen removal increased the duration of male function at the expense of female function lowering maternal fertility compared to females. This pattern was evident in five populations with females experiencing a twofold average seed fertility advantage compared to hermaphrodites. Gynodioecy often appears to evolve from protandrous ancestors and pollen limitation is widespread in flowering plants suggesting that sexual conflict may play an unappreciated role in the evolution of this form of sexual dimorphism.

A widely observed pollinator decline around the world has led to the prediction that terrestrial ecosystems could be disrupted as plant pollination suffers, but declining pollination success has not been tested rigorously in wild plants, and it still remains unclear how pollination success of plant species responds differently in the context of pollinator decline.By viewing the number of seeds per pod as a quantitative measure of successful pollination, we examined seed pods in 4637 herbarium specimens of 109 obligately outcrossing legumes collected over the past century.We found that only 13 species showed significant temporal change with nine of those as an increase. None of the three subfamilies of legumes showed a consistent trend, and the subfamily Papilionoideae with the most specialized flowers, had increasing seed number per pod more often than decreasing.We conclude that legume pollination in China shows no sign of disruption and the effects of plant-pollinator disruption may be more complicated than simplistic predictions have allowed.

Premise Spatial and temporal resource allocations within inflorescences have been well‐studied in many plants based on flowering sequence or floral position. However, there had been few attempts to investigate architectural effects and resource competition in species where the blooming pattern does not follow a linear positional pattern within the inflorescence. Moreover, most flowering plants show female‐biased sex allocation in early or basal flowers, but it is unclear in species with inherent and changeless ovule production. Methods We investigated intra‐inflorescence variation in reproductive traits of Salvia przewalskii, a perennial herb with 4‐ouvle ovary flowers and flowering sequence–floral position decoupled inflorescences. To detect the effects of resource competition and architectural effects on reproductive success, we manipulated inflorescence (removed floral buds by position and flowering sequence) and pollination (opened and supplemented pollination). Results Pollen production and dry mass deceased from bottom to top flowers but did not significantly differ following flowering sequence, resulting in male‐biased sex allocation in basal flowers. The seed production, fruit set, and bud development exhibited significant declining trends from proximal to distal positions regardless of the thinning and pollen treatments. Meanwhile, the seed production, fruit set, and bud development success did not significant differ when thinning was conducted according to flowering sequence. Conclusions Architectural effects plays a crucial role in resource allocation within decoupled flowering inflorescences. Moreover, our results highlighted that inherent floral traits such as changeless ovule production, may modify architectural effects on sex allocation.

Quantifying the strength of the ecogeographic barrier is an important aspect of plant speciation research, and serves as a practical step to understanding the evolutionary trajectory of plants under climate change. Here, we quantified the extent of ecogeographic isolation in four closely related Aquilegia species that radiated in the Mountains of SW China and adjacent regions, often lacking intrinsic barriers. We used environmental niche models to predict past, present, and future species potential distributions and compared them to determine the degree of overlap and ecogeographic isolation. Our investigation found significant ecological differentiation in all studied species pairs except A. kansuensis and A. ecalacarata. The current strengths of ecogeographic isolation are above 0.5 in most cases. Compared with current climates, most species had an expanding range in the Last Glacial Maximum, the Mid Holocene, and under four future climate scenarios. Our results suggested that ecogeographic isolation contributes to the diversification and maintenance of Aquilegia species in the Mountains of northern and SW China and would act as an essential reproductive barrier in the future.

Roscoea stenophylla Y. L. Fan, a new species of the ginger family (Zingiberaceae) from Yunnan, China, is described. It morphologically resembles R. schneideriana (Loesener) Cowley in leaf shape, individual size, inflorescence shape and floral color, but is significantly distinguished by longer and narrower leaves, longer corolla tubes, reflexed labellum, inflated and not hooked stigma, and anther bent into a semicircle (U type) without inflation at the end of the connective spurs.