The study reveals how Balanophora plants function despite abandoning photosynthesis and, in some species, sexual reproduction. Their plastid genomes shrank dramatically in a shared ancestor, yet the ...

We tend to think of plants as passive, vulnerable actors. But in their partnership with insects, it’s plants that often play ...

Humans like plants. We like seeing them change the colour of their leaves throughout the year. They connect us to nature even if we live in a big ...

Sex in the garden is more straightforward for the birds and the bees than it’s for the plants. Reproductive processes vary among flowering plants; for many, there is more than one option. When ...

When the female gametes in plants become fertilized, a signal from the sperm activates cell division, leading to the formation of new plant seeds. This activation can also be deliberately triggered ...

You might think flowers don’t have much choice about who they mate with, given they are rooted to the ground and can’t move. But when scientists from Nagoya, Japan used powerful microscopes to study ...