New research reveals the secret nightlife of moths, fluttering under cover of darkness to carry out their vital work as unsung heroes pollinating blackberry brambles.
No matter how old or where it's from, frozen sunflower pollen helps bumblebees fight off a common gut parasite that threatens bee health and pollination.
‘Two households, both alike in dignity’ is famously the opening line of Romeo & Juliet. How alike houses Montague and Capulet actually are is debatable, but what is clear is that plants with two households can be...
Ant–plant associations are widely diverse and distributed throughout the world, leading to complex ecological networks. Regarding ant–plant mutualism, ant pollination is a very rare interaction and few studies have...
For many people, pollen means nose itching and eyes watering - but it is so much more. It is the reason we have food on our plates, and flowers around us. When pollen forms abnormally or degenerates, it is unable to...
Dispersal is crucial due to its direct impact on dynamics of a species’ distribution as well as having a role in shaping adaptive potential through gene flow. In plants forming scarce and small populations, knowledge...
The obturator bridges the downward transit of the pollen tube through style to ovary in many angiosperms. Examining pollen tube growth kinetics in the pistil in Malus × domestica and relating these to changes occurring...
Flora Unveiled: The Discovery and Denial of Sex in Plants. Lincoln Taiz and Lee Taiz. Oxford University Press, 2017. Living in the 21st century with easy access to knowledge – and its various fake versions – on the...
This item concerns uses of botanical bits-and-pieces in ways that Nature never intended. But having also brought forth Man, that natural entity has given that creation’s ingenuity free rein and he has come up with...
In the mustard family, which includes the important crop Brassica (rapeseed/canola) and the model plant Arabidopsis, the surfaces of the female stigmatic cells are dry. These cells – on which the pollen grains land...