The longer a plant waits to self-pollinate, the longer it has to attract pollen from outside. But waiting too long can have consequences.

The deadly carrot might sound as likely as the killer tomato, but decoding the defences of Thapsia garganica might have a big pay-off in the future.

Trees fight infections by trapping pathogens in one part of the tree. Hugh Morris and colleagues have been reviewing how trees use secondary metabolites in order to control the process.

A new technique to scan tree rings offers to yield precious new data on past climates.

For pioneer species in the marshes, it's a case of grow fast or die young. But the differences in growth speed can be caused by tiny changes in geography.

A coastal plant's ability to cope with temporary flooding isn't just due to its own traits. Neighbours can make a flood more, or less, tolerable.

We asked the members of the in silico Plants editorial board about the experience that has had the biggest impact on their career. This is what they said:   In 1977, while doing my undergraduate study at Stellenbosch University, the crop physiology lecturer, Dr George Craven, asked his students to write a computer program to […]

If you're looking for biodiversity, one good place to start is an unexpectedly harsh environment.

Can a plant learn? Drawing on recent and forthcoming research, Monica Gagliano and Michael Marder suggest that we should be rethinking what intelligence is.

How do flowers develop? This is a puzzle tackled by Wei Lai and Louis Ronse de Craene in their paper What is the nature of petals in Caryophyllaceae? Developmental evidence clarifies their evolutionary origin. In it, the authors use scanning electron microscopy to examine the interiors of flowers close up. While the topic might seem […]

Being a seed from self-pollination guarantees failure in Eucalyptus regnans. Yet despite this, new research shows a mixed-mating system. including selfing, is evolutionarily stable.

In October 2018 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its report on the feasibility of us keeping under the 1.5°C target suggested by the United Nations at the Paris climate change meeting in 2015. The IPCC gave the world around 12 years to radically cut carbon emissions or we will face very serious […]