The Venus flytrap Dionaea muscipula is the most sophisticated of the carnivorous plants. Its traps snap shut in a fraction of a second, imprisoning prey in a cage of teeth that line the edges of the ...

A rare fossil plant reveals how early plants moved water and food, helping to explain the secrets of tree growth.

The tallest plants alive today can grow to over 100 meters tall. But they evolved from ancestors that were just a few ...

Balanophora species are parasitic plants that live underground and emerge above ground only during the flowering season — and some species even reproduce exclusively asexually. This collage shows ...

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 ...

Plants evolve to live in urban areas, reveals new research. A species that successfully established itself throughout a major city exhibited "distinct and inheritable" characteristics that have ...

This seems to have been the way carnivorous plants evolved their meat-eating abilities — at least for those genes examined so far. What came as more of a surprise was the discovery that whenever and ...