Success tastes like something else for a high-altitude pitcher plant
Hunting at high altitude, where the insects are few, can be difficult. Quite a few pitcher plants prefer to wait for a delivery.
What lies beneath? Botanists find a disconnection between how plants behave above and below ground.
Do plants invest more in a live-fast and die-young strategy, or take it slow and steady? Botanists have found that the appearance above the ground might not reflect what’s happening in the roots.
Goth Rabbits spread Vampire Plants
Rabbits tend to nibble on vegetation rather than dry fruits, but the black Amami rabbits of Japan seem to be eating the fruits and spreading the seeds of an unusual plant.
Six glorious plant science facts that happened in 2022
2022 left us memorable moments: the celebration of illustrious anniversaries, the resurrection of physical over virtual scientific congresses and the publication of remarkable research articles that showcase the wonders of the green world. It’s hard to choose among the thousands of noteworthy events and impressive discoveries … for the sake of time, here are the essentials!
Missing seed data from the tropics could be harming conservation efforts
Visscher and colleagues propose that global analyses of seed traits with evidence for geographical variation prioritize the generation of new data from tropical regions as well as multi-lingual searches to fill geographical and taxonomic gaps.
Why would a flower change its shape?
Bilateral flowers tend to receive less pollen than radial flowers, so why would a plant want a bilateral flower?
Does the fungus Botrytis cinerea break plants with a sledgehammer or a series of specialised tools?
The fungus Botrytis cinerea can infect many plants, but how can it get past so many different defences? Does it have a variety of tools or one highly effective tool?
A parasitic plant can cause an invasive plant’s allies to switch sides
Scaldweed, Cuscuta grovonii, can prevent an invasive plant from using soil microbes to help invade territory – and the parasite can even become more vicious by using those same microbes against its invasive host.
Botanists say the largest amber-preserved flower is a new species
The flower, first discovered over 150 years ago, has yielded new clues from its pollen.
How does the corpse flower’s scent change over time?
The Titan arum produces a smell like rotting flesh. Now botanists have analysed the chemicals and found that the smell changes over the two days that the plant flowers.
Botanists find a cool way to preserve an endangered plant’s seeds
If you wonder how cool cool is, it’s at least -196 ℃ (-320 ℉).
Pollinators like moths are increasingly missing from a warming subarctic
The complex relationships between plants and their pollinators in subarctic Finland have changed dramatically across the last century
Yew Only Live Twice
Biologists have talked about bringing back extinct species like the dodo, but now botanists have drawn up a list of extinct plants that might be able to return to the wild.
How to account for clonal pup mass
Modeling differences in reproductive effort between iteroparous and semelparous reproductive strategies in Bromeliaceae