Home – Home – Jornals – Flora and Vegetation of Asian Russia 2020 number 4

The reproductive biology of Ajuga reptans (Lamiaceae) was studied in the Moscow region. A. reptans is a perennial, chasmogamous species that occurs relatively frequently in Molinio-Arrhenatheretea, Agrostietea stoloniferae, Galio-Urticetea dioicae, and Carpino-Fagetea communities. According to our data (Godin, Akhmetgarieva, 2019), A. reptans is a gynodioecious species that forms two types of flowers on the different plants. Gynodioecy is a type of a breeding system where, when pistillate flowers are produced on some plants, it perfects flowers on other plants (Rivkin et al., 2016; Godin, 2019, 2020). There is too little information about the reproductive system of A. reptans as the gynodioecious species. The reproductive biology of A. reptans was studied, specifically addressing the following: P/O ratio, breeding system, and seed production. Pollination and breeding system observations were carried out in a natural population. A gauze bag was used to bag 10 inflorescences from 10 diff erent individual plants; the remaining inflorescences (control) were always within sight of potential pollinators. Because bagged perfect and pistillate fl owers of A. reptans produced no fruits, newly opened flowers were hand-pollinated with pollen from the same flower or from the other plants and the flowers were subsequently bagged in order to detect self-incompatibility. The presence of agamospermy was investigated by emasculating flowers immediately before anthesis, followed by bagging. The number of seeds produced in each treatment was counted at the end of fructifi cation. The mean values of the P/O ratio for A. reptans flowers were from 592 to 731. According to ideas of R.W. Cruden (1977), A. reptans refers to the facultative xenogamic species. Neither two types of sexual plants produced seeds from emasculated and bagged flowers, which indicates the absence of agamospermy. Seed production by self-pollinated, by hand, and bagged perfect fl owers of A. reptans was 75.5 %, indicating the presence of certain self-pollination and geitonogamy. Seed production (control, free pollination) of perfect flowers and plants are significantly higher than pistillate flowers and female plants. Th ese differences are related to a low activity of different insects that visit fl owers of A. reptans , especially pistillate fl owers. There are no differences in seed production of perfect and pistillate flowers when they are pollinated by hand because, in such situations, an abundance of pollen occurs.