UdeM Nouvelle and Le Devoir have both just published online articles about an important study recently published in Current Biology by the IRBV’s Simon Joly and McGill University’s Daniel Schoen.

Cleistogamy is a trait of certain flower species that produce beautiful, normal flowers to attract pollinating insects as well as ‘runts’ which are able to self-pollinate. The article confirms a 150-year old theory by Darwin stating that this self-polinating trait could be associated to bilaterally symmetric flowers. In order to verify this hypothesis, Simon Joly and Daniel Schoen studied over 2500 different flowering plants.

Read the full articles in UdeM Nouvelles and Le Devoir (both in French).