For more than a century, researchers have marveled at how pollen creeps down into a plant, growing a tube that twists and turns to reach the target ovary. But the nature of the siren song guiding this ...

“Are plants trying to kill us?” allergy sufferers often ask Deborah Devis. A plant molecular geneticist at the University of Adelaide’s Waite campus in Australia, Devis should know the answer better ...

We hit a spell of cool weather the past few days. Whenever you get this kind of weather during a hot spell, go out and lightly shake your tomato, pepper and eggplants for about 10 seconds each.

For many, the return of the spring garden brings with it a sneezy, itchy, foggy-headed feeling that hits the moment a warm breeze stirs up. I’m fortunate not to suffer much, but my blue car turned a ...

When they feed on nectar from the Hypenia macrantha flower, an herb that grows on riverbanks in the Brazilian Cerrado (wooded savanna), hummingbirds are surprised by an eruption of pollen grains, the ...

It’s no secret that bumblebees depend heavily on pollen for their unique worker-centric lifestyles. In fact, whenever you witness a bumble bee leaping from one flower to the next in your outdoor ...

Plants producing flower pollen must not leave anything to chance. The model plant thale cress (Arabidopsis), for instance, uses three signaling pathways in concert with partially overlapping functions ...

When a particle of plant pollen lands on a female flower, its journey is not done. The pollen, which typically contains two sperm cells and a sperm transport vehicle called the pollen tube cell, ...

Avoiding high-pollen-producing plants in your yard is a good first step, but that’s not going to stop those nasty pollen grains from traveling hundreds of miles to zip right up your unsuspecting ...

For many, the return of the spring garden brings with it a sneezy, itchy, foggy-headed feeling that hits the moment a warm breeze stirs up. I’m fortunate not to suffer much, but my blue car turned a ...

Though it might be small solace to springtime sneezers, a new study shows grains of pollen to be biomechanical marvels. Their weblike outer shell folds like origami as grains leave a flower, sealing ...