Biologists from Lomonosov Moscow State University and HSE University have studied the patterns of flower development in yellow water-lily (Nuphar lutea). They found out that all the floral organs are arranged in cycles (whorls) rather than inserted sequentially in a spiral, as is the case in some other basal angiosperms. The ancestors of yellow pond-lily were among the first to diverge from the root of the angiosperm evolutionary tree, which is why it can be used to hypothesize about the structure of the first flowers. The study has been published in Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology journal.
Click here for original story, Yellow pond-lily prefers cyclic flowers to spiral ones
Source: Phys.org