Flower plots

A simpler and perhaps more relevant representation is the star. The original axes are drawn as spokes on a wheel, and the coordinate data values are plotted on these axes, and connected by line segments. A more aesthetically pleasing version was presented by Martin et al. in the form of a flower plot (see below). 

Flower plots are particularly useful in assessing the distribution of properties across a collection of compounds. Figure 5 shows the structures and associated flower plots of 18 side-chains from a biased /((-substituted glycine peptoid combinatorial library. The structures on the first row are tyramine... 

Figure 4 Flower plot of tyramine. There Is one petal for each of the five chemical functionality descriptors, five shape descriptors, five receptor recognition descriptors, and the computed log P...

Figures Structures and flower plots of 18 side-chains form a biased -substituted glycine combinatorial library based on the tyramine submonomer (reproduced from J. Med. Chem., 1995, 38, 1431). The side-chains on the top row include tyramine and its five closest analogs. The 12 side-chains in the lower rows were chosen by D-optimal design from a pool of 721 amines...

Because there is a one-to-one correspondence between the number of compounds and the number of plots, flower plots are impractical for visualizing large data sets. Flower plots are particularly useful, however, in assessing the distribution of properties across a small collection of compounds, for example, a set of reagents used in generating a combinatorial library. 

Flowers appeared in the autumn of 1958 on plots treated with 40, 50, and 100 p.p.m. of potassium gibberellate and petiole elongation was noted on plants sprayed with 100 p.p.m. When the plants started to bloom in the spring, more flowers opened earlier on the plants sprayed with 10 and 20 p.p.m. of potassium gibberellate than on the unsprayed check plants. Plants in all plots started to bloom at about the same time. No other effects of the sprays were noted until harvest. 

These field studies indicate that sprays of potassium gibberellate in the autumn change the pattern of fruit production the following spring. It would appear that the flowers had all reached a similar stage of development at the bloom period on plots treated with 10 and 20 p.p.m. of the material. This is carried through to the harvest period, when more fruit is harvested early from the plots receiving these treatments. 

Figure 8. Changes in alkaloid content (mg g wet weight, left axis) and flower production per plant (number, one year obsv. right axis) in Lupinus argenteus with elevation. Data from Carey and Wink, 1994 re-plotted by author.

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