To make sure that flying pollinators come to flowers to pick up pollen, plants evolved special organs, the nectaries, to attract the animals. Scientists have now identified the sugar transporter that ...

Question: My nectarine and peach trees have hard pale green ball things near the base of leaves. What are they and are they harmful to my trees? Answer: How cool! I’d never heard of anything like this ...

Scientists discovered that swollen-thorn acacias invested more in ant rewards during a drought, suggesting that mutualistic interactions play a crucial role in the plant’s survival, even during ...

Flowers get all the attention when it comes to providing nectar for pollinating insects, but Tino shows another, less well-known source of nectar. They’re called extra-floral nectaries - quite a ...

Around 4,000 plant species from different parts of the world secrete nectar outside their flowers, such as on their stems or leaves, through secretory glands known as extrafloral nectaries. Unlike ...

Nectar is the secret sauce for boosting biodiversity and increasing the number of beneficial interactions in the ecosystems around us. Elizabeth has worked since 2010 as a writer and consultant ...

Between rain showers one day this week, I went out into the front yard and snipped off the upper halves of several common milkweeds. But, I wasn't purposely destroying beneficial plants. This patch of ...

Evolution is based on diversity, and sexual reproduction is key to creating a diverse population that secures competitiveness in nature. Plants had to solve a problem: they needed to find ways to ...