The Building Blocks of Flowers

Frond of the lycophyte Selaginella moellendorffii.

Biologists have discovered that a fundamental building block in the cells of flowering plants evolved independently, yet almost identically, in the 420-million-year-old lycophyte lineage. Called syringyl lignin, the building block is a critical part of the plants' scaffolding and water-transport systems, yet it apparently emerged separately much like flight arose separately in both bats and birds.

Credit: Jing-Ke Weng, Department of Biochemistry, Purdue University