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FLORAL MERISTEM TERMINATION
Arabidopsis thaliana produces determinate flowers, meaning that it develops a fixed number of whorls and parts per whorl, and internodes between whorls do not elongate. Prunet et al. (pages 901–919) show that floral axis termination and compression is influenced redundantly by REBELOTE (a protein of unknown function), SQUINT (a cyclophilin), ULTRAPETALA1 (a putative transcription factor), and CRABS CLAW (a carpel identity gene) through pathways dependent on AGAMOUS and SUPERMAN. The cover image illustrates one example of the floral indeterminacy phenotype described by the authors, here caused by combined mutations of CRABS CLAW and SQUINT. In this mutant, a floral axis grows inside the primary carpels and breaks through, while producing reiterations of stamens and carpels as whorls separated by elongated internodes.