HowPlantsWork Weblog

A Long, Long Time Ago on Planet Not So Far Away What were the first plants to colonize the land on Earth? And when did this occur in the history of the biosphere? Why did a burgeoning of flowering plant species come to dominate their gymnosperm and fern predecessors so quickly? The Mossy (Algal and [...]

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The First Flower? How did flowering plants (angiosperms) evolve from non-flowering seed plants (gymnosperms)? Or did they? When did the first flower appear on this planet? And where on Earth did it occur? These are some of the most hotly debated questions among botanists today. Partly because some of the fossil data is at odds [...]

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Mushrooms are the visible manifestations (sexual organs, actually) of microscopic, soil-dwelling fungi that form mutually-beneficial partnerships with plants. Since these filamentous fungi interact with the roots of plants, such symbiotic relationships are called mycorrhizae, literally “fungus root”. Fossil evidence supports the idea that these plant-fungal partnerships are as old as the emergence of terrestrial plants [...]

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Nearly 2 billion people will eat a chili pepper today, mainly because of their pungent flavor, that is, their peppery heat. This perceived heat is caused by a chemical called capsaicin. Capsaicin and other capsaicinoids, found mainly in the pepper’s fleshy tissue which holds the seeds (see below right), activates heat-sensation-related receptors in the mammalian [...]

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Sex. Animals do it. And plants do it, too. To enhance sex (cross-pollination), the flowers of some plants not only produce chemical pigments (colors) and sugary nectar to attract pollinators, but also volatile chemicals (scents) to do the same. In addition to these chemical attractants, flowers may also produce chemical repellents, such as nicotine (see [...]

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