annals-of-botany
A change in pollinator alone does not explain speciation
How do plant species diverge? The Grant-Stebbin model describes pollinator-driven speciation. The idea is that plants adapt their flowers to work with the mosr
annals-of-botany
How can sterility make a plant more fertile?
Brian Park and colleagues have been examining a peculiar fact. A plant can increase its reproductive success by producing sterile flowers. Not all the flowers are
annals-of-botany
Pollination quantity and purity
If you share a pollinator with another plant species in your location, is it a good idea to flower at the same time? You can only
annals-of-botany
How do pollinators paint the landscape with colour?
When you look at a patch of flowers, you often see clusters of colour. Even when a single species can have many different colours, you get
annals-of-botany
Where does scent go when attraction doesn’t matter?
Scent matters. If you’re a flowering plant, scent is an important tool for attracting pollinators. It’s no surprise that botanists see it as a
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Can a tomato hear, and what would it listen to?
Over Christmas, a couple of papers came out that suggest plants can respond to airborne sound waves. The findings challenge many ideas about how plants respond to sound.
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Wassailing to wake the trees
January 17 marks twelfth night in the Julian Calendar. It also marks the traditional night of wassailing, a ritual to drive evil spirits from the orchard.
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For the Pineapple Lily, attraction is a matter of chemistry
Eucomis regia, the pineapple lily, doesn’t attract insects or birds to pollinate it. So how does it reproduce?
News in Brief
Botanists see the start of tropicalisation
With climate change, plants start colonising new areas, but how will new regions become tropical? A new study hints at the start of the process.
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When did the first flowers open?
Finding out when the earliest ancestor of the flowering plants evolved has been difficult. Estimates have been wildly different, depending on the method you use.
Uncategorized
The plant that farms other plants for food
It’s not just animals that the bladderwort, Utricularia, eats. Two new papers are finding out how bladderworts also digest microscopic plants.
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The act of drawing can teach more about Botanical morphology than writing
A study comparing descriptive writing with botanical drawing has found that both methods aid learning about taxonomy. However, drawing subjects captured more morphological information.