The study reveals how Balanophora plants function despite abandoning photosynthesis and, in some species, sexual reproduction. Their plastid genomes shrank dramatically in a shared ancestor, yet the ...

You might think flowers don’t have much choice about who they mate with, given they are rooted to the ground and can’t move. But when scientists from Nagoya, Japan used powerful microscopes to study ...

In the damp understory of forests in Taiwan, mainland Japan, and Okinawa, a plant called Balanophora can fool you at first ...

When the female gametes in plants become fertilized, a signal from the sperm activates cell division, leading to the formation of new plant seeds. This activation can also be deliberately triggered ...