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Category: Amazing Plants

  • When Hybrids Are Better Able To Survive Change Than Their Parents Are

    While hybrids might be expected to be a blend of the two parent species, the researchers found that they tended to have shorter and wider flower openings than both of the parent species which means that a wider range of pollinators can enter the flowers. By allowing a wider range of insects to pollinate them,…

  • How Do Sunflowers Turn To Face The Sun?

    What makes the sunflower such a puzzle is that it belongs to a group of flowers that lack what is known as a pulvinus—a thickening at the base of a leaf or other structure that changes its rigidity in response to light. As the sun moves across the sky, different amounts of water flow into…

  • How Saguaro Cacti Depend On Distant Volcanos

    “I started noticing that these saguaro age cohorts followed notable volcanic eruptions. I knew that volcanoes drive milder summers and winters, and typically more rainfall for an extended period—two to three years after the event, which is a perfect window of time for the saguaro to get established and have a chance to survive.” (Click…

  • Newly Discovered Orchid Named For Its Devil Face. Now Everyone Will Want One

    Although the curious orchid could be mistakenly taken for a few other species, there are still some easy to see physical traits that make the flower stand out, apart from the demon’s head hidden at the heart of its colours. (Click on title for full story.)

  • Pea Plants Shown To Make Adaptive Choices About Risk

    “To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of an adaptive response to risk in an organism without a nervous system. We do not conclude that plants are intelligent in the sense used for humans or other animals, but rather that complex and interesting behaviours can theoretically be predicted as biological adaptations – and executed…

  • Planet To Plant: Every Plant Is Built From The Whole Planet

    And now, entirely by chance, they find themselves plucked from the moving air and strung together in a conga line made by a baby maple in a North American garden, hanging at the far end of a freshly growing twig. And there they will stay for, well, maybe 100, 150 years, surrounded by more plucked…

  • First Proof Of Batesian Mimicry in Two Plant Species!

    The data are consistent with Batesian mimicry, wherein the conspicuous characteristic of a defended model is replicated by an undefended mimic across its entire growing range. Our study provides the first detailed and powerful quantitative leaf shape evidence of leaf shape being matched between an undefended plant species to a chemically defended unrelated species across…

  • Trees May Actually Instigate Rain

    Since the experiment showed molecules of pinene naturally combining with one another when subjected to conditions that resembled those in the upper atmosphere, and since pinene is itself built of stuck-together isoprenes, it’s possible that the specific structure of the molecules isn’t as important as their general chemical makeup, consisting of multiple carbon atoms linked…

  • The Highly Flexible Moss That Collects Even The Scarcest Water

    The key to the plant’s success is its small leaf hair point, or awn. These 0.5-2 mm-long hair-like structures at the tip of each leaf function like a Swiss Army knife in their ability to collect water from a variety of size scales. Whether the plant gets buckets of rain or only the occasional passing…

  • Plants Respond To Touch And Even A Shadow

    Although people generally assume plants don’t feel when they are being touched, this shows that they are actually very sensitive to it and can redirect gene expression, defence and potentially their metabolism because of it. (Click on title for full story.)