Category: Amazing Plants

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 different parts of the pulvinus, nudging the leaf in the sunniest direction. The sunflower, with no such structure, should be immobile. (Click on title for full story.)

“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 on title for full story.)

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.)

“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 by organisms – on the basis of processes evolved to exploit natural opportunities efficiently.” (Click on title for full story.)

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 atoms, stuck in place as the branch of a maple tree, until one day, the tree topples over or the branch drops to the ground, the beetles and fungi move in and munch those atoms apart so they become soil or beetle droppings and then, after a long while, take to the air again. (Click on title for full story.)

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 a shared growing range, and highlights the importance of using a spatially explicit morphometric method when investigating leaf shape, especially in relation to plant mimicry. (Click on title for full story)

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 fog, the awn of S. caninervis can exploit any available water resource using four specialized tools. (Click on title for full story.)

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.)