Saturday, May 17, 2003

New in Knotweed

The June 2003 issue of the journal Molecular Ecology has this article (link to abstract) about Japanese knotweed (Fallopia japonica). The authors used microsatellites to analyze populations of the invasive plant in its native range on Mt. Fuji, and demonstrated that populations are made up of both clonal plants and seedlings. Also, while pollen tends to disperse quite far from the parent plant, seeds do not disperse far from their mothers, leading to very low levels of subpopulation genetic variation.

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