As yet, it has remained largely unknown whether genetic variation of the FLM gene locus plays a role in flowering time regulation across Arabidopsis accessions and if so, which variations determine basal and temperature-dependent FLM expression and splicing. Although two FLM deletion alleles conferring temperature-insensitive early flowering were identified in the Arabidopsis accessions Niederzenz-1 (Nd-1) and Eifel-6 (Ei-6), their limited demographic and genetic spread indicated that FLM deletions may be disadvantageous (Werner et al., 2005; Balasubramanian and Weigel, 2006). A first FLM expression variant was determined from the early flowering accession Killian-0 (Kil-0). In Kil-0, a LINE retrotransposon insertion in FLM intron 1 caused premature transcription termination, aberrant FLM splicing, consequently reduced FLM expression and earlier flowering. This phenotype was especially prominent at a temperature of 15°C , which is closer to the average temperature in the native range of the species than the commonly used 21°C (Lutz et al., 2015; Hoffmann, 2002; Weigel, 2012). The subsequent identification of nine further accessions with an identical LINE insertion was suggestive for a recent adaptive selective sweep (Lutz et al., 2015). It was thus concluded that FLM expression-modulating alleles are advantageous for flowering time adaptation in the ambient temperature range, particularly since there are no other pleiotropic growth changes observed in FLM mutant alleles.