Latest Flower Stories

A new study of flower petals shows evolution in action, and contradicts more that 60 years of scientific thought. The findings are reported by a scientist from UC Santa Barbara and a research team from Harvard University in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B this week. Columbine flowers, known as Aquilegia, evolved several lengths of petal spurs that match the tongue lengths of their pollinators, including bees, hummingbirds, and hawkmoths. The petal spurs are shaped like a tubular...

[ Watch the Video ] To match pollinators' probing tongues, cells in floral spurs elongate, driving rapid speciation Columbine flowers are recognizable by the long, trailing nectar spurs that extend from the bases of their petals, tempting the taste buds of their insect pollinators. New research at Harvard and the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) helps to explain how columbines have achieved a rapid radiation of approximately 70 species, with flowers apparently tailored...

In an irony of nature, invasive species can become essential to the very ecosystems threatened by their presence, according to a recent discovery that could change how scientists and governments approach the restoration of natural spaces. Princeton University researchers report this month in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B evidence that destructive, non-native animals that have been deservedly maligned by conservationists the world over can take on important biological roles...

Reproductive assurance in a self-compatible, annual, monocarpic herb, Centaurium erythraea In plants that rely on animals for pollination, the number of seeds they produce, or their relative fitness, is influenced by pollinator visits and the successful deposition of pollen. The number of visits a plant may receive depends partly on pollinator density as well as on conspecific plant density. But what if a plant happens to grow in a population that is small or has very few pollinators...

Whether a species can evolve to survive climate change may depend on the biodiversity of its ecological community, according to a new mathematical model that simulates the effect of climate change on plants and pollinators. The findings, published in the early online edition of Evolutionary Applications, are important because some species that have survived large climatic change in the past might not be able to survive current and ongoing climate change. In the study, researchers used...

Phylogeny constrains floral scent rewards in a specialized bee-pollinated group of oil-secreting orchids Bees, bats, and moths all follow their noses in search of food from flowers. Plants that rely on such animals for pollination often produce particular chemical scents that attract specific pollinators. However, the ability to produce certain chemicals is also determined by a plant's genetics, or phylogenetic history, which can potentially limit its ability to respond to pollinator...

Across the western Cape of South Africa can be found small plants in the Iris family called Babiana. Flitting between them are sunbirds, small colourful birds like the African version of hummingbirds, that drink the nectar of flowers and in doing so pollinate them. New research to be published early next year in a special edition on plant mating in the Annals of Botany (http://j.mp/pRSzzC) by De Waal, Anderson and Barrett shows that while birds are important for plant reproduction, when it...

Bumblebees use complex problem solving skills to minimise the energy they use when flying to collect food, according to new research from Queen Mary, University of London.For the bumblebee (Bombus terrestris), as with many other animals, the simplest approach to finding more nectar would be to fly to the nearest neighbouring flower, particularly considering their tiny brain size. But a team from Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences has found that this isn't the case.The...

The researchers discovered that a rainforest vine, pollinated by bats, has evolved dish-shaped leaves with such conspicuous echoes that nectar-feeding bats can find its flowers twice as fast by echolocation. The study is published today in Science.While it is well known that the bright colours of flowers serve to attract visually-guided pollinators such as bees and birds, little research has been done to see whether plants which rely on echolocating bats for pollination and seed dispersal...

By Kim McDonald, UC San DiegoFarmers and other astute observers of nature have long known that crops like corn and sorghum grow taller at night. But the biochemical mechanisms that control this nightly stem elongation, common to most plants, have been something of a mystery to biologists"”until now.In this week's early online publication of the journal Nature, biologists at the University of California, San Diego report their discovery of a protein complex they call the "evening complex"...