ARGUABLY the world’s weirdest plant, Welwitschia mirabilis is a tangled mass of shredded, fraying leaves in the Namib desert. For a thousand years, perhaps more, it grows just two long leaves, which ...

Insect pollination is a decisive process for the survival and evolution of angiosperm (flowering) plants and, to a lesser extent, gymnosperms (without visible flower or fruit). There is a growing ...

Plants tend to hoard DNA, not throwing anything out. The extra genes they hold inside can mutate to produce new physical traits. Holding onto the extra genes increases the tempo of evolution for the ...

A defining feature of angiosperms is double fertilization involving the female gametophyte central cell and formation of a nutrient-storing tissue called endosperm. The route for the evolutionary ...

Named for Charles Darwin, the only known specimen of a newly discovered beetle, Darwinylus marcosi, died in a sticky gob of tree sap some 105 million years ago in what is now northern Spain. As it ...

For many years, Charles Darwin was haunted by flowers. In 1859, the naturalist published his most famous work, On the Origin of Species, the book that is generally regarded as the foundation of ...

The world as we know it today is almost inconceivable without the rich and colourful landscapes created by plant life. Among them are flowering plants, or angiosperms, which are by far the most ...

The discovery of a beetle and pollen in 105-million-year-old Spanish amber is proof of a new insect pollination mode that dates to the mid-Mesozoic, before the rise of flowering plants. The study ...