Some plants bend the rules of plant life so far that they barely resemble plants at all. Balanophora is one of them - a ...

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

Balanophora plants represent an extreme example of this shift. They do not produce their own food through photosynthesis but ...

Balanophora is a plant that abandoned photosynthesis long ago and now lives entirely as a parasite on tree roots, hidden in dark forest undergrowth. Scientists surveying rare populations across East ...

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 ...

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We humans are a delicate bunch. We don’t have bark, boney exo-plates, or lush fur to protect us from hostile environments, so ...

Deep in Japan’s ancient forests, where sunlight struggles to pierce the dense canopy, grows a cluster of translucent white blossoms that seem almost otherworldly. Known as ghost flowers, these ...

Plants and trees may seem pretty passive, but behind the scenes, their cells are working hard to put on a magic show. In this episode of Crash Course Botany, we’ll explore how the processes of ...