asexually propagated through tuber division ( Wilfret, 1993 ). The ornamental value of caladium in the container or in the landscape depends, to a large extent, on its leaf characteristics, including leaf shape, color, and color pattern. Improving these
hybridizations between elite cultivars or breeding lines. In recent years, significant efforts have been made to understand the mode of inheritance of several important caladium foliar traits, including leaf shape, main vein color, leaf spotting, and leaf
with two alleles that are inherited independently from leaf shape but closely linked with the color of the main vein ( Deng et al., 2008 ). Another major foliar trait in caladium is leaf blotching, the occurrence of numerous irregularly shaped color
were categorized as possessing more than two whorls of petals. Data were subjected to the chi-square test for goodness of fit to compare actual ratios with expected ratio. Fig. 1. Leaf vein color, floral symmetry, and flower form of gloxinia. The
groundcover in the corners of garden plots. The leaves of S. rubrotinctum change color with changes in environmental conditions. The color changes add to the ornamental value of the plant. Low temperature and high light intensity induce changes in leaf color
canopy structure appeared different ( Decoteau et al., 1988 ). Dry or fresh plant weight (biomass) and amount of foliage (leaf area) are commonly used measurements for documenting differences in plant development among experimental mulch color treatments
). The leaf color of plants is mainly related to the type, content, and distribution of pigments in the leaves ( Chu et al., 2013 ; Hong et al., 2010 ). In most plants, the chlorophyll content is considerably higher than the carotenoid and anthocyanin
The developmental pattern of leaf color distribution during plant development in 10 cultivars of Caladium ×hortulanum Birdsey was investigated. We used the color occupying the largest area in the terminal leaf as the dominant color, and expressed the leaf color stability during plant development by the ratio of the percentage of the dominant color area in the terminal leaf to that of the dominant color area in the initial leaf (leaf color stability index). In some cultivars, leaf color stability index was clearly greater than 1 (leaf-color-unstable cultivar), but in some cultivars it was close to 1 (leaf-color-stable cultivar). In plants regenerated from leaf explants of leaf-color-unstable cultivars, many (21% to 43%) color variants were observed but only a few (0% to 6%) occurred from leaf explants of leaf-color-stable cultivars. Tissue culture appears to be a useful technique for rapid propagation based on leaf color stability in leaf-color-stable and leaf-color-unstable cultivars.
Leaf color is largely the result of photosynthetic pigments, primarily chlorophyll (Chl). Chl plays an essential role in light absorption for energy transfer ( Stern et al., 2004 ). The Chl biosynthesis pathway is complex and involves more than 20
analysis should be attributed to the two subpopulations reflected in the PT and FL parents. Table 2. Mean squares and F-tests for the crapemyrtle factorial analyses for height (HT), leaf out (LO), bloom date (BD), and flower color (FC