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Most flowers display distinct colour patterns comprising two different areas. The peripheral large-area component of floral colour patterns attracts flower visitors from some distance and the central small-area component guides flower visitors towards landing sites. Whereas the peripheral colour is largely variable among species, the central colour, produced mostly by anthers and pollen or pollen mimicking floral guides, is predominantly yellow and UV-absorbing. This holds also for yellow flowers that regularly display a UV bull’s eye pattern. Here we show that yellow-flowering  Crocus  species are a noticeable exception, since yellow-flowering  Crocus  species–being entirely UV-absorbing–exhibit low colour contrast between yellow reproductive organs and yellow tepals. The elongated yellow or orange-yellow style of  Crocus  flowers is a stamen-mimicking structure promoting cross-pollination by facilitating flower visitors’ contact with the apical stigma before the flower visitors are touching the anthers. Since  Crocus  species possess either yellow, violet or white tepals, the colour contrast between the stamen-mimicking style and the tepals varies among species. In this study comprising 106  Crocus  species, it was tested whether the style length of  Crocus  flowers is dependent on the corolla colour. The results show that members of the genus  Crocus  with yellow tepals have evolved independently up to twelve times in the genus  Crocus  and that yellow-flowering  Crocus  species possess shorter styles as compared to violet- and white-flowering ones. The manipulation of flower visitors by anther-mimicking elongated styles in  Crocu s flowers is discussed.

A Matter of Contrast: Yellow Flower Colour Constrains Style Length in Crocus species