15 June 2023
Most modern plants grow leaves in a pattern that follows the Fibonacci sequence, but a reconstruction of a 400-million-year-old plant reveals that its leaves grew much more chaotically
23 March 2023
South African daisies co-opt the genes they usually use to grow root hairs and transport iron to create petals that resemble female flies – enticing males to land and pollinate the plant
10 November 2022
Many species of tree-living ants cultivate plants that grow on trees either for food or shelter, but there is a debate over whether the practice should be considered agriculture
8 November 2022
Flowerless gymnosperms, such as conifer and ginkgo, ruled the Jurassic world before their flowering rivals, the angiosperms, became dominant. What caused the fall of one and the rise of the other?
22 April 2021
A study of 17 grass species found that 13 of them carry genes that have been transferred from another species, suggesting that gene-swapping happens all the time
3 May 2018
All complex organisms rely on tiny nodules called mitochondria to supply their cells with energy – but mistletoe’s mitochondria don’t work and yet it survives
30 April 2018
A plant fossil that lay unnoticed for a century is unexpectedly large for something so old, and it could upend our ideas about the evolution of land plants
20 April 2018
Trees repeatedly move their branches up and down during the night, and this may reflect water being pumped along the branches – just like a human pulse
27 December 2017
Ever since we domesticated the cocoa tree over 3000 years ago, we have been breeding them to make tastier chocolate – but in the process we have made them vulnerable
1 August 2017
Some time between 250 and 140 million years ago, the very first flower bloomed – an enormous evolutionary study offers clues about its appearance
