Xenia (plants)

Xenia (also known as the Xenia effect) in plants is the effect of pollen on seeds and fruit of the fertilized plant. The effect is separate to the contribution of the pollen towards the next generation.

The term was coined in 1881 by the botanist Wilhelm Olbers Focke to refer to effects on maternal tissues, including the seed coat and pericarp, but at that time endosperm was also thought to be a maternal tissue, and the term became closely associated with endosperm effects. The term metaxenia was later coined and is still sometimes used to describe the effects on purely maternal tissues.

Endosperm effects in the seed

One of the most familiar examples of xenia is the different colours that can be produced in maize (Zea mays) by assortment of alleles via individual pollen grains. Such maize cobs are cultivated for decorative purposes.

The endosperm tissue, which makes up most of the bulk of a maize seed, is not produced by the mother plant, but is the product of fertilization, and genetic factors carried by the pollen affect its colour. For example, a yellow-seeded race may have its yellow colour determined by a recessive allele. If it receives pollen from a purple-seeded race that has one copy of a dominant allele for purple colour and one copy of the recessive allele for yellow seed, the resulting cob will have some yellow and some purple seeds.

Xenia

Xenia may mean:

Generosity or hospitality

Places

People

Xenia (hotel)

Xenia (Ξενία) was a nationwide hotel construction program initiated by the Hellenic Tourism Organisation (Ελληνικός Οργανισμός Τουρισμού, E.O.T.) to improve the country's tourism infrastructure in the 1960s and 1970s. It constitutes one of the largest infrastructure projects in modern Greek history.

History

Until the 1950s, Greece featured only a few major hotels, mostly situated in the country's great cities, and a few smaller ones in islands like Corfu or Rhodes. In 1950, EOT began a program to construct and operate hotels across the country, especially in the less-travelled areas. Locations were specially selected and the architecture combined local knowledge with standardized elements. The buildings were embedded in the landscape, but at the same time followed a modernist style.

The first manager of the project was the architect Charalambos Sfaellos (from 1950 to 1958) and from 1957 the buildings were designed by a team under Aris Konstantinidis. Many private hotel projects in Greece were inspired by the Xenia hotels and the program had reached its aims in the early 1970s. In 1974 the construction program was complete. The Xenia program itself was officially terminated in 1983, and the hotels were given over to private operators or eventually sold off.

Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna of Russia

Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna of Russia (Russian: Ксения Александровна Романова; 6 April 1875 – 20 April 1960) was the elder daughter of Emperor Alexander III of Russia and Empress Maria Feodorovna of Russia (née Princess Dagmar of Denmark) and the sister of Emperor Nicholas II. She married her second cousin Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich of Russia, with whom she had seven children. During her brother's reign she recorded in her diary and letters increasing concern about his rule. After the fall of the monarchy in February 1917 she fled Russia, eventually settling in the United Kingdom.

Early life

Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna was born on 6 April 1875 at Anichkov Palace in St. Petersburg. She was the fourth child and elder daughter among the six children of Alexander III of Russia and his wife Empress Maria Feodorovna of Russia (née Princess Dagmar of Denmark).

After the assassination of her grandfather Tsar Alexander II of Russia, when Xenia was 6 years old, her father Alexander III ascended to the Russian throne. It was a difficult political time, plagued with terrorist threats and for security reasons Alexander III moved with his family from the Winter Palace to Gatchina Palace. Xenia and her siblings were raised mostly there with simplicity. As a child, Xenia was a tomboy and was very shy.