From the archive record
According to study conducted by Han and colleagues, published in the ‘Annals of Botany’. Their study focused on the wild shrub, Daphne kiusiana, endemic to East Asia. It offers insights into the fascinating journey from outcrossing, where a plant is fertilized by another, to self-fertilization. The research deciphers the subtle genetic and morphological changes that have been quietly unfolding for over 100,000 years. Han’s team discovered that the plants in the eastern region of the Daphne kiusiana distribution, which includes southeastern Korea and Kyushu, Japan, exhibit fewer and smaller flowers compared to their counterparts in the western region (southwestern Korea). This decrease in visibility, coupled with the increased rate of selfing and higher levels of homozygosity—genetic simila