Learn how an underground plant is redefining what plants need to survive.

A weird-looking parasitic plant has discarded all its photosynthesis machinery – and nevertheless has found a way to thrive.

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

A new method predicts leaf optical properties from traits, improving canopy light modeling and photosynthesis estimates in ...

Balanophora is a plant that abandoned photosynthesis long ago and now lives entirely as a parasite on tree roots, hidden in ...

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

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

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 ...

A research team has developed a new way to measure and predict how plant leaves scatter and reflect light, revealing that ...

“My long-standing aim is to rethink what it truly means to be a plant,” Kenji Suetsugu, a botanist at Kobe University in Japan, said in a statement. “For many years I have been fascinated by plants ...

Plants grow best when genetics inside cells cooperate, while mismatched genetics reduce photosynthesis and climate resilience ...

Money plants are a favorite among indoor plant lovers, thanks to their air-purifying qualities and easy maintenance ...