LEAFY (abbreviated LFY) is a plant gene that causes groups of undifferentiated cells called meristems to develop into flowers instead of leaves with associated shoots.
LEAFY, which encodes a plant-specific transcription factor, is found in all land plants and one of its exons have been used extensively in phylogenetic work on spermatophytes. When the gene is overexpressed, the plant is less sensitive to environmental signals and flowers earlier.
Famous quotes containing the word leafy:
“The sugar maple is remarkable for its clean ankle. The groves of these trees looked like vast forest sheds, their branches stopping short at a uniform height, four or five feet from the ground, like eaves, as if they had been trimmed by art, so that you could look under and through the whole grove with its leafy canopy, as under a tent whose curtain is raised.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I know of the leafy paths that the witches take
Who come with their crowns of pearl and their spindles of wool,
And their secret smile, out of the depths of the lake....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“To the birds and trees he talks:
Caesar of his leafy Rome,
There the poet is at home.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)