About plants we often encounter
The belief that sunflowers always follow the sun is only half true. Only young, growing sunflowers track the Sun; once mature, they stop and settle… Read More »Does a Sunflower Really Always Follow the Sun? The Body Clock That Settles Facing East, and the Golden Angle in Its Seeds
With no brain and no nerves, the Venus flytrap ‘counts’ how many times its trigger hairs are touched — closing the trap at two and… Read More »How a Venus Flytrap Counts to ‘Two’ and Snaps Shut — The Counting Secret Inside a Leaf
The ginkgo that paints autumn streets gold has barely changed in over 200 million years — a true ‘living fossil.’ From a lone surviving lineage… Read More »Ginkgo: A ‘Living Fossil’ Older Than the Dinosaurs
After the blossoms fall, two red dots appear on the petioles of a cherry tree’s young leaves. These are extrafloral nectaries, and the tree uses… Read More »The Hidden Nectaries on a Cherry Tree’s Leafstalk: Calling Ants from the Leaves, Not the Flowers
Though named ‘Japanese cornel,’ sansuyu has been an East Asian medicine for over two thousand years. Follow its path from the Shennong Bencao Jing and… Read More »How Sansuyu Became a Medicinal Herb: The Textual History and Chemistry of Cornus officinalis
Peaches and nectarines are not different fruits but the same species separated by a single gene. From the five-petal flowers that open before the leaves,… Read More »The Secret of Peach Blossoms and Peach Fuzz: Design in Five Petals and Tiny Hairs
