Close Encounters
When Beetles Take the Lead in Orchid Romance
A rare South African orchid reveals that beetles can be refined partners in one of nature’s most intricate pollination systems.
Close Encounters
What if a Flower Never Needed a Pollinator at All?
New research shows that one small mountain orchid secures reproduction before its flowers even open and may fare better selfing than crossing with its neighbours.
Close Encounters
Earthworms: The Invisible Gardeners of Tropical Bryophytes
A new study shows that earthworms can carry viable bryophyte propagules through their guts, helping mosses and liverworts spread across tropical soils.
Close Encounters
Tracking and Conserving an Endangered Plant from Brazil’s Rocky Outcrops
A multidisciplinary hunt uncovers new populations of an endemic plant, while exposing the fragile balance that keeps it from disappearing.
Close Encounters
Lights, Camera, Bloom!
Flowers may seem still, but time-lapse videos reveal their hidden movements, offering a powerful way to document plants and spark public interest in botany.
Close Encounters
Bogotá Through Butterfly Eyes
By tracking butterflies across urban parks, scientists uncover how city planning decisions influence not only which species survive, but how they live.
Close Encounters
When Flowers Go Silent
How Scentless Cacti Rely on Echolocation for Pollination
Close Encounters
Cycads attract beetles with heat in the night
Pollination looked different at the time of the dinosaurs. Without showy flowers, heat was used to attract beetle pollinators.
Close Encounters
How plants know when they are too close to each other
Sorghum plants can sense nearby plants through chemicals in the soil water, and this makes them slow their growth, which helps explain why planting crops close together doesn’t always increase yields.
Close Encounters
Anything Goes When You Live in a Crack
New research shows that the plants thriving in parking lots succeed not just because they are tough, but because they spread their pollen and seeds in many different ways.
Close Encounters
Glossy flowers allow for long distance romance
In the competitive world of plant-pollinator interaction, a little razzle-dazzle helps a flower be seen.
Close Encounters
Bait and switch: sweet Nepenthes nectar is toxic to the ants it lures
Pitcher plants prove, lethally, that there’s no such thing as a free lunch.