There’s been a well-documented shift toward earlier springtime flowering in many plants as the world warms. The trend alarms biologists because it has the potential to disrupt carefully choreographed interactions between plants and the creatures—butterflies, bees, birds, bats and others—that pollinate them.
Researchers have shown that plants can regulate the chemistry of their petal surface to create iridescent signals visible to bees.
Microbes growing on flowers have adverse effects on their yields. This is why plants are quick to shed their flowers, reveals a new study involving both field experiments and plant microbiome analysis.
You can’t see it, but different substances in the petals of flowers create a “bulls-eye” for pollinating insects. Now research sheds light on chemical changes in flowers which helps them respond to environmental changes, including climate change, that might threaten their survival.
How flowers form properly within a limited time frame has been a mystery. Now researchers have found that KNUCKLES, a small multi-functional protein, supports the correct timing of floral development for the proper formation of flower reproductive organs
Flowers come in a multitude of shapes and colors. Now, an international research team has proposed the novel hypothesis that trade-offs caused by different visitors may play an important role in shaping this floral diversity.
As well as bright colours and subtle scents, flowers possess many invisible ways of attracting their pollinators, and a new study shows that bumblebees may use the humidity of a flower to tell them about the presence of nectar, according to recent research.
Plant ecologists compare temporal rhythms of early-flowering plants in different environments. They found that human land use can also significantly influence the pace of plant life cycles.
Optogenetics can be used to activate and study cells in a targeted manner using light. Scientists have now succeeded in transferring this technique to plants.
People often thing of flowers as a bright and showy splash of contrasting colors. But some plant species actually produce two types of flowers: normal ones with a colorful appearance, and “runts” that are small, never open. Why do some plants produce small and unattractive flowers? Two researchers think they’ve figured out why, supporting a hypothesis dating back 150 years to Charles Darwin.
