While walking in Big Bend National Park in Texas' Chihuahuan Desert, a park volunteer came across a fuzzy flower that turned out to be a never-before-seen species. The "woolly devil," as researchers have named it, is in the sunflower family and also represents a new genus.

This is the first time in nearly 50 years that a new plant genus has been described in a U.S. national park, since the discovery of the July gold shrub (Dedeckera eurekensis) in Death Valley National Park in 1976, according to a statement from the California Academy of Sciences.

The new discovery suggests that researchers are far from documenting all of the plant diversity of the Chihuahuan Desert, which covers parts of Mexico and the southwestern U.S.

"While many assume that the plants and animals within our country's national parks have probably been documented by now, scientists still make surprising new discoveries in these iconic protected landscapes," Isaac Lichter Marck, a botanist at the California Academy of Sciences and co-author of research describing the new species, said in the statement.

Discovering the woolly devil

In March 2024, the park volunteer, Deb Manley, shared photos of the flowers — which measured 1 to 3 inches (2.5 to 7.6 centimeters) across and were poking out from between desert rocks — to the citizen science platform iNaturalist, where an international community of botanists tried to identify the plant.

Manley and a team of botanists and biologists studied the flower's characteristics and conducted genetic analyses, comparing its DNA with those of species from herbaria at Sul Ross State University in Texas and the California Academy of Sciences. They confirmed the plant as both a new species and a new genus, and identified it as a member of the sunflower family, according to the research, which was published Feb. 18 in the journal PhytoKeys.

Related: Giant, fungus-like organism may be a completely unknown branch of life

The researchers chose the scientific name Ovicula biradiata. In Latin "ovis" comes from "sheep" and honors the desert bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis nelsoni), an iconic and threatened desert animal. The plant has white and woolly leaves, with small, curved, red and white flowers that resemble horns. The flowers were found near a part of the park called Devil's Den, leading the team to name the species the "woolly devil."

The Chihuahuan Desert is North America's largest and most biologically diverse warm desert, and Big Bend National Park contains a huge amount of this biodiversity. Many species found in the park have limited distributions, found only within the park or just outside it.

So far, woolly devils are known to exist only in a small area of Big Bend National Park, and the researchers think that, based on its limited range, this plant might be particularly sensitive to changing weather patterns.

This part of the Chihuahuan Desert has faced recent severe drought conditions, and the problem is expected to worsen due to climate change. That means woolly devils could qualify as vulnerable and face a high threat of extinction.

"As climate change pushes deserts to become hotter and drier, highly specialized plants like the wooly devil face extinction," Lichter Marck said in the statement. "It's possible that we've documented a species that is already on its way out."

Seeds have helped plants evolve into a breathtaking variety of forms that fill our world with color and provide us with food and medicine. It's difficult to imagine where plants would be today without seeds. That raises a question: Where did the first seeds come from?

Plants started using seeds to reproduce toward the end of the Devonian period (419 million to 359 million years ago). Scientists are still studying the exact evolutionary origins of seeds, but the earliest confirmed seeding-plant fossils are from the Famennian age, which began around 372 million years ago.

For example, Famennian fossils of the plant Elkinsia polymorpha discovered in West Virginia reveal seed-bearing shoots, according to the University of California, Berkeley Museum of Paleontology. Researchers have also found other examples of ancient seeds in Europe and China.

Gerhard Leubner, a plant biochemistry professor whose team focuses on seed science research at Royal Holloway, University of London, said plants likely evolved seeds soon after they started growing on land.

"They emerged from the sea about 450 million years ago," Leubner told Live Science. "A bit later, there is a phase where ferns dominated the world, and they had spores, and from these spores, it is believed plant seeds evolved."

Related: How do plants with seedless fruit reproduce?

Some plants — including mosses, algae and ferns — continue to use spores, rather than seeds, to reproduce, according to a 2019 article in The Conversation by Marjorie Lundgren, a senior research fellow in plant environmental physiology at Lancaster University in the U.K.

A spore is made up of a single cell with the DNA of one parent plant, while a seed is a more complex multicellular organism that typically requires two parents. A single-parent spore must first develop into a kind of pre-plant stage called a gametophyte, only becoming a plant when two of these gametophytes join for fertilization. Seeds, by contrast, skip this stage because a female plant produces seeds from a male plant's pollen after fertilization.

Leubner explained that seeds have lots of advantages over spores. They can be much larger and have hard, protective shells, making them more resilient. They can also store food to provide the new plant with an immediate energy source.

Spores also typically require a lot of moisture to prevent them from drying out, while seeds are capable of adapting to lots of different environments, which is likely what drove their evolution, Leubner noted. "It's not that spores are not adapted, but seeds became more sophisticated," Leubner said.

Both spores and seeds can enter a state called dormancy, which involves delaying their germination — development into a plant — until conditions are optimal. Leubner noted that seeds' ability to survive in different habitats, combined with dormancy, allowed them to be flexible and diversify.

Dormancy was a huge advantage to plants and made seeds capable of a kind of "multidimensional travel," said Charles Knight, a plant evolutionary biologist at California Polytechnic State University.

Seeds are "multidimensional in that they can travel long distances with their adaptations to be hooked on fur or to be carried by the wind," Knight told Live Science. "But they can also travel through time. They can travel through generations because they can remain dormant in the soil and then germinate hundreds, if not thousands, of years later."

​​When pollinators land on a flower, they're on a mission: They're looking for sweet nectar to eat and specks of nutritious pollen to bring back to their young.

But how do insects know where to find pollen? In theory, the process is easy: A flower flaunts bits of tasty, aromatic dust in plain sight, letting pollinators know where to go right away. But the reality is quite different. "It's not in the plant's interest to emit an honest signal," said Casper van der Kooi, a biologist who studies flower color evolution at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.

For plants, pollen is about reproduction. The goal of creating this powder is to transfer a flower's gametes, or reproductive cells, to another flower to create a seed. Plants often need pollinators for that job, but it takes a lot of energy and nutrients to make pollen. So, if insects end up eating the pollen, or if the wrong pollinators get to it first, the energy the plant has invested goes to waste, van der Kooi explained.

So, for most plants, pollen is hidden, making an insect's mission harder to accomplish. But a plant can't be too dishonest, van der Kooi said; otherwise, the insects will learn of this deception and stop visiting the plant. So, instead of communicating directly, plants often use subtle signals to convey information, said Natalie Hempel de Ibarra, a professor who researches the behavior, senses and cognition of social insects at the University of Exeter in the U.K. Insects then pick up on certain cues to decide which flowers to visit.

Visual cues are one of the main forms of plant-pollinator communication. Flowers are colorful, and insects have this innate affinity to colorful objects, Hempel de Ibarra said. Some flowers have so-called nectar guides, which are patterns, visible only in the ultraviolet spectrum, that illuminate a path to the nectar and/or pollen that an insect can follow. Various studies have documented that these nectar guides, as well as the hue of the flowers themselves, can change color as pollen and nectar supplies decrease. Lantana camara, a popular garden plant, is an example of this type of signaling, turning yellow to red.

Related: Do bees really die if they sting you?

Smell can also indicate the amount of pollen. Flowers release all sorts of chemical compounds into the air, and insects can pick up on these so-called olfactory cues. Some plants can adjust the amounts of compounds they release as an additional signal. For example, blueberry flowers have evolved to emit a lower amount of compounds after being pollinated, according to a 2011 study in the journal Annals of Botany.

Pollinating insects can also detect other subtle signals. One interesting example is the electric field. Flowers have a weak electric field, Hempel de Ibarra said, and this field is affected by the shape of the flower. It can also be disrupted after an insect visits it. Research has shown that bumblebees and some other insects can pick up this disruption using specialized hairs.

But ultimately, how insects make their pollen-finding decisions varies widely among species. Flowers can also evolve highly specialized relationships with specific pollinators, thus influencing how insects make their choices. Some flowers, like dandelions, have their pollen in plain sight, attracting a whole suite of pollinators, Hempel de Ibarra said. But tomato flowers, which rely specifically on bees to be buzz pollinated, hide their pollen in special structures to attract this specific insect.

In addition, different insects are attracted to specific colors, van der Kooi said. For example, flies tend to gravitate toward yellow, whereas bees prefer blue.

Decision-making can even vary among individuals. Hempel de Ibarra, who studies bees, said that individuals within a social colony can make different decisions in pollen gathering as they learn and experience the environment around them. "That makes it quite complicated for the bees to decide what kind of pollen it should be collecting," she said. "It's such an intricate relationship."

Scientists in India have observed mugger crocodiles engaging in some strange behaviors, including hunting in packs, using sticks as bait to lure herons and egrets within striking range, showing interest in flower garlands floating in the river and even saving a feral dog that had been chased by other dogs. 

The new study, published Aug. 26 in the Journal of Threatened Taxa, suggests that mugger crocodiles (Crocodylus palustris) inhabiting the Savitri River in Maharashtra, India are more cognitively advanced than scientists currently believe. 

As tantalizing as these observations are, though, an expert Live Science contacted is skeptical, noting that while the hunting behaviors have previously been reported — anecdotally — the latter two claims are almost certainly anthropomorphic conjecture. 

"Crocodilians do have a sophisticated suite of behaviors," said Duncan Leitch, a biologist specializing in the neurophysiology of reptiles at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was not involved in the research. "But some of these conclusions are using a human definition of intelligence and trying to find that in crocodilians."

Related: Crocodiles and gharials are getting bizarre orange 'tans' in Nepal. Here's why.

The new study recorded several instances in which groups of mugger crocodiles swam in circles around schools of fish, creating a vortex. Their movement was presumed to have corralled the fish, and the crocodiles were observed consuming them while engaging in this behavior. Similar behaviors have previously been observed in other crocodilians. 

The recent paper said mugger crocodiles appear to use sticks to lure wading birds such as cattle egrets (Bubulcus ibis). These birds use sticks in constructing their nests, and competition for prime twigs can be intense. So, a branch positioned on a crocodile snout might seem a tempting option.

A 2013 paper also chronicled a series of anecdotal observations of crocodilians using sticks to entice wading birds. 

"Crocodilian sensory systems are incredibly sophisticated. They have a very good sense of vision. Their sense of touch is among the finest in the animal kingdom," Leitch said. "They're definitely tuned to picking up signals from their environment. Whether or not this is intelligence in the way that we see crows using tools — it's difficult to say."

He added that the anecdotal evidence cited is not widely accepted among crocodile researchers. 

The authors also said that mugger crocodiles appear to be attracted to  garlands of marigold (Tagetes erecta) flowers dropped into the river during funeral rites. The researchers suggested the crocodiles may be enticed by both the color of the flowers and their antibacterial properties. 

However, the crocodiles were not observed interacting with or consuming the flowers — they were simply found in proximity to them. Though the authors cited incidents in which captive crocodilians were observed playing with bougainvillea flowers, no such behavior was observed in the muggers. 

Crocodile empathy?

The researchers also reported an incident in which a young dog was chased into the river by a pack of adult feral dogs. Rather than eating the dog, three mugger crocodiles seemed to nudge it back to shore. 

"[The crocodiles] guided the dog away from the site where it would have been vulnerable to being attacked by the pack of feral dogs waiting on the river bank," they wrote. "These crocodiles were actually touching the dog with their snout and nudging it to move further for a safe ascent on the bank and eventually escape."

The authors interpreted this action as empathic — suggesting the crocodiles may have been concerned for the dog's safety. While it is certainly interesting that they did not consume an obvious prey item, there is little evidence that crocodilians are capable of empathy for other species, Leitch said.  

"They [the authors] may be coming from an anthropomorphic perspective and trying to ascribe abilities that they potentially might not have," Leitch said.

Anecdotal findings like the ones offered in this paper may offer prospects for additional investigation. But in the absence of more rigorous research they are just that: anecdotal, Leitch said.

The giant asteroid that snuffed out the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous period (145 million to 66 million years ago) left flowers relatively unharmed, and the blooms thrived in the aftermath, a new study has found.

Earth lost three-quarters of its species, including all non-avian dinosaurs, when an asteroid struck Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula 66 million years ago. Scientists call this cataclysmic period the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) mass extinction event. 

New modeling reveals that, despite widespread devastation, the major families of flowering plants, called angiosperms, were adaptable enough to survive the deadly event and reap the rewards, according to a study published Sept. 13 in the journal Biology Letters. 

"After most of Earth's species became extinct at K-Pg, angiosperms took the advantage, similar to the way in which mammals took over after the dinosaurs, and now pretty much all life on Earth depends on flowering plants ecologically," study lead author Jamie Thompson, a postdoctoral evolutionary biologist at the University of Bath in England, said in a statement. 

Related: 'Once again, innovation and proliferation ended with catastrophe': The environmental disaster of plants taking over the world

Researchers have a hard time identifying flowering plants in the fossil record; most of the record is made up of isolated leaves that aren't attached to other plant organs, according to a 2008 study in The Paleontological Society Papers journal. There's evidence for flowering-plant extinctions following the asteroid strike, but not for widespread decline as in other types of organisms. 

To learn more about how flowering plants responded to the K-Pg extinction event, the authors of the new study looked at major flowering-plant lineages previously mapped from DNA mutations of thousands of species. 

They used mathematical models to estimate that flowering plants experienced a relatively stable extinction rate over time, with no evidence of a mass extinction. That means that while individual species were lost during the event, the larger family groups survived, according to the study. 

Most of the flowering-plant families we see today emerged before the K-Pg event, with the ancestors of modern orchids, magnolias and mint living alongside the dinosaurs. Following the K-Pg extinction, the surviving flowering plants spread and diversified. 

"Flowering plants have a remarkable ability to adapt: they use a variety of seed-dispersal and pollination mechanisms, some have duplicated their entire genomes and others have evolved new ways to photosynthesise," study co-author Santiago Ramírez-Barahona, a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, said in the statement. "This 'flower power' is what makes them nature's true survivors."

An unusual species of bamboo is about to flower for the first time in over 100 years, which could enable researchers to find out more about its mysterious regeneration process. 

Phyllostachys nigra var. henonis, or henon bamboo, flowers only once every 120 years before perishing. The current generation of this species is expected to flower in 2028. However, researchers from Hiroshima University in Japan noticed that a few local specimens had begun to flower early — and they took the opportunity to study this enigmatic species.

In a study published June 12 in the journal PLOS One, the researchers found that many of the flowering specimens did not contain any seeds. The team also observed a lack of new culms growing from the root systems of those that had flowered, also showing limited asexual reproduction.

This could mean that many dense fields of bamboo may be hard to regenerate, and may disappear and be replaced by meadows.

Related: World's deepest canyon is home to Asia's tallest tree - and Chinese scientists only just found it

Henon bamboo was introduced to Japan from China in the ninth century, but scientific recordings of its regeneration process are sparse. Its 120-year flowering intervals were based on ninth-century archival documents, and previous colonies died out right after flowering in 1908, before re-establishing themselves throughout Japan, the researchers wrote. 

"Scientists 120 years ago did not describe the flowering of this species very well," first author Toshihiro Yamada, a conservation biologist and forest ecologist at Hiroshima University, told Live Science "Therefore, we do not know much about the flowering ecology and regeneration process of this bamboo species."

The researchers studied a colony of early-flowering specimens they found in Hiroshima in 2020 with 334 "culms" — the woody, jointed stem in bamboo. The researchers found 80% of the culms that had bloomed over the course of three years produced no seeds.

By the end of 2022, no bamboo culms had survived. "The question still remains about how the dead culms were replaced by a new generation," said Yamada, "Apparently, sexual regeneration does not work, since this species failed to make seeds."

Yamada said it is possible that the bamboo regenerates underground, eventually sprouting into new individual culms. After these culms are established, the bamboo would then populate vigorously to compensate for its inefficient reproduction.

However, this regeneration process may take many years and could lead to large biomass loss in the interim — this bamboo species covers a huge swathe of land, potentially upending the ecosystems it helps support. The scientists say that this would not only mean economic losses to local industries that rely on bamboo as a material, but it may also lead to environmental problems.

"Natural services given to people by bamboo includes the prevention of soil erosion and the prevention of landslides," as well as vegetation and forest cover, Yamada said.

He said he would like to study the flowering and regeneration of this bamboo species in its ancestral homeland, China, to better understand its characteristics. "Do they produce seeds in China? I'd like to study that while observing the Japanese populations of bamboo," he said.

Scientists are blaming an unsuspecting creature for disturbing a 75,000-year-old Neanderthal burial: burrowing bees. These insects may have hidden pollen underneath a Neanderthal's remains, tricking researchers into thinking the Neanderthal had been buried on top of a bed of flowers, a new study finds.

The flower burial interpretation blossomed over half a century ago, when researchers found the site of Shanidar, a rocky cave in the Zagros Mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan that held several Neanderthal burials. One of these, which scientists called Shanidar 4, became known as the "flower burial" when researchers discovered clumps of pollen from flowering plants in the soil underneath an adult male Neanderthal.

The burials at Shanidar, initially excavated in the 1950s and 1960s, were the first evidence that Neanderthals, cousins on our evolutionary tree, engaged in ritual depositing of dead bodies.

Although evidence of Neanderthal burial is no longer controversial in the field of archaeology, the interpretation of pollen as evidence of a flower-adorned burial ritual is still debated.

In the new study, published Aug. 28 in the Journal of Archaeological Science, a team of researchers led by Chris Hunt, a paleoecologist at Liverpool John Moores University in the U.K., reexamined the pollen evidence from Shanidar 4 and found that burrowing bees were a better explanation for the pollen than a Neanderthal funeral ritual.

Related: How smart were Neanderthals?

Soil samples from on top of and underneath the burial were originally studied in 1975 by two palynologists — pollen experts — who determined they came from five known and two unidentified taxa, or biological groups. They suggested that all of these plants were available to be picked at the same time, likely between late May and early June.

While Hunt and his team largely agree with the earlier identification of the plant species, they discovered that the plants actually grow at slightly different times of the year, calling into question the previous interpretation that Neanderthals gathered flowers to bestow on the dead.

During excavations by Hunt and his team in 2016, they noticed a potential alternative explanation for the pollen: ancient mud-lined bee burrows close to Shanidar 4. These ground-nesting bees could have drilled into the dirt and deposited collected pollen as they moved through the burrows.

The mixed clumps of pollen aren't indicative of entire flowers being laid down, the researchers wrote in their article. Instead, they suggest that it is far more likely that "pollen was collected and deposited in clumps by bees."

Hunt and his team think the pollen is likely ancient, perhaps even closely contemporaneous with the Neanderthal burial. But neither the pollen nor the bees can be directly dated.

"There have been successful experiments directly dating pollen grains," Hunt told Live Science in an email. But bee exoskeletons are not easy to radiocarbon-date, and "the level of Shanidar 4 is older than radiocarbon will extend, at about 75,000 years." (Radiocarbon dating can reliably date organic items up to 50,000 years old.)

Angie Perrotti, a palynologist who runs the Palynology and Environmental Archaeology Research Lab (PEARL) who was not involved in the study, told Live Science in an email that Hunt and colleagues made a "compelling argument" for pollen introduction through burrowing bees. "This case underscores the crucial role of precise sampling and systematic archiving of sediment and pollen samples to allow for the reproducibility of prior research," she said.

While Hunt and colleagues' work has not substantiated the flower part of the "flower burial," they affirm that the tight cluster of burials at Shanidar remains incredibly significant to our understanding of Neanderthals and noted that "woody tissue" samples collected from the site may hold the key to learning more about their burial rituals.

"I favour the idea that the Neanderthals put branches and other vegetation over the bodies," Hunt said. Placing the spiky species Centaurea solstitialis (yellow star-thistle) on top of, rather than under, the deceased Neanderthals could have defended the bodies from scavengers. "But the evidence is pretty equivocal, and I'm still working on the contexts," Hunt said. "So watch this space..."

While most frogs eat a diet rich in insects, one species in Brazil has its own method of nourishment: dunking itself headfirst into a flower's bulb to slurp up its sweet nectar. When the frog comes up for air, pollen grains stuck to its rust-colored body get dispersed as it hops from flower to flower in the forest.

Scientists think this could be the first time an amphibian has been observed pollinating flowering plants, according to a study published in the June issue of the journal Food Webs.

"We observed individuals entering large flowers and leaving covered in pollen without destroying the flower structures," lead author Carlos Henrique de-Oliveira-Nogueira, a graduate student at the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul in Brazil, told Live Science in an email. "This was the first time this behavior (actively seeking fruits and flowers) was seen and documented."

It's long been known that species other than bees, including bats and birds, can act as pollinators. But scientists were surprised to see an Izecksohn's Brazilian tree frog (Xenohyla truncata) performing a similar behavior on a Brazilian milk fruit tree (Cordia taguahyensis), known for its creamy-white flowers, according to the study.

One evening, the team watched as two frogs "lapp[ed] up nectar from inside the bell-shaped flowers" in eastern Brazil's Restinga forests and then spread the pollen around, The New York Times reported.

Related: Otherworldly 'Lord of the Rings' frog discovered in the mountains of Ecuador

Normally, frogs prefer to dine on moths and insects, which they capture by sticking out their long tongues. 

"Most frog species are carnivorous in their adult phase," de-Oliveira-Nogueira told Live Science. He said there are other frogs that are known to feed on plant parts. But in Brazil, X. truncata is the only one. "Here, we confirmed how opportunistic X. truncata seems to be. It feeds on both insects and plants — apparently anything that is available for consumption," he told Live Science.

However, he cautioned that more research needs to be done before this species can be classified as a bona fide pollinator. 

"This was amazing and left us with many questions that still need answers," he said. "The species meets some of the requirements to be a pollinator, but we still need further study to actually prove this."

Felipe Amorim, a pollination ecologist at São Paulo State University in Brazil who wasn't involved in the study, agreed.

"We cannot say that these frogs are actually pollinators," Amorim told The New York Times. "They are flower visitors, they are flower-visitor frogs. We have a lot to learn about this novel interaction."

Scientists have officially identified the largest fossilized flower ever recorded: a nearly 40 million-year-old flower entombed in a hunk of amber, according to a study published Jan. 12 in the journal Scientific Reports. The flower had been known for 150 years but has only now been definitively identified as a new species and is offering new clues to climates and ecosystems of the past.

Measuring about 1 inch (28 millimeters) wide, the strikingly well-preserved flower is three times larger than the next-biggest amber-embedded bloom ever found and was unearthed in 1872 in the Baltic forests of northern Europe. It dates to the late Eocene epoch (roughly 38 million to 33.9 million years ago). When the specimen was first discovered, naturalists classified it as the now extinct Stewartia kowalewskii, an ancient flowering evergreen plant, according to a statement. 

The flower was then housed in the Natural History Museum in Berlin for the next century and a half. However, for years, researchers questioned the blossom's true identity.

Related: Amber tomb of 'dancing' wasp and delicate flower also hides a gruesome secret

To lay to rest the uncertainty surrounding the blossom's genus and species, researchers extracted specks of pollen and examined them, along with the bloom's anatomy, under a microscope. They determined that the flower wasn't S. kowalewskii — or even from the genus Stewartia. Rather, it was part of Symplocos, "a genus of flowering shrubs and small trees not found in Europe today but widespread in modern East Asia," according to The New York Times.

Therefore, the study authors proposed a new name for the flower: Symplocos kowalewskii.

While they're harder to come by, plants in amber provide paleobotanists with a wealth of information, Eva-Maria Sadowski, a postdoctoral researcher at the Natural History Museum in Berlin, told The New York Times. The reclassification of this flower is important because it provides scientists with a better understanding of the ecological diversity of the Baltic amber forest and how the planet's climate has changed over time.

"These tiny grains are natural recorders of past climates and ecosystems that can help us measure how much our planet has changed in the past due to natural (nonhuman) causes," Regan Dunn, a paleobotanist and assistant curator at La Brea Tar Pits and Museum in California who was not involved with the research, told The New York Times. "This allows us to better understand just how much our species is impacting the planet."

Nearly 2,000 years ago, the ancient people of Teotihuacan wrapped bunches of flowers into beautiful bouquets, laid them beneath a jumble of wood and set the pile ablaze. Now, archaeologists have found the remains of those surprisingly well-preserved flowers in a tunnel snaking beneath a pyramid of the ancient city, located northeast of what is now Mexico City. 

The pyramid itself is immense, and would have stood 75 feet (23 meters) tall when it was first built, making it taller than the Sphinx of Giza from ancient Egypt. The Teotihuacan pyramid is part of the "Temple of the Feathered Serpent," which was built in honor of Quetzalcoatl, a serpent god who was worshipped in Mesoamerica. 

Archaeologists found the bouquets 59 feet (18 m)  below ground in the deepest part of the tunnel, said Sergio Gómez-Chávez, an archaeologist with Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) who is leading the excavation of the tunnel. Numerous pieces of pottery, along with a sculpture depicting Tlaloc, a god associated with rainfall and fertility, were found beside the bouquets, he added. 

The bouquets were likely part of rituals, possibly associated with fertility, that Indigenous people performed in the tunnel, Gómez-Chávez told Live Science in a translated email. The team hopes that by determining the identity of the flowers, they can learn more about the rituals. 

Related: Photos: The amazing pyramids of Teotihuacan

The team discovered the bouquets just a few weeks ago. The number of flowers in each bouquet varies, Gómez-Chávez said, noting that one bouquet has 40 flowers tied together while another has 60 flowers. 

Archaeologists found evidence of a large bonfire with numerous pieces of burnt wood where the bouquets were laid down, Gómez-Chávez said. It seems that people placed the bouquets on the ground first and then covered them with a vast amount of wood. The sheer amount of wood seems to have protected the bouquets from the bonfire's flames. 

The tunnel that Gómez-Chávez's team is excavating was found in 2003 and has yielded thousands of artifacts including pottery, sculptures, cocoa beans, obsidian, animal remains and even a miniature landscape with pools of liquid mercury. Archaeologists are still trying to understand why ancient people created the tunnel and how they used it. 

Teotihuacan contains several pyramids and flourished between roughly 100 B.C. and A.D. 600. It had an urban core that covered 8 square miles (20 square kilometers) and may have had a population of 100,000 people. 

Originally published on Live Science.

Scientists recently discovered a flower that lures in and imprisons coffin flies with the smell of death.  The plant uses this stinky aroma to trick the insects into pollinating its flowers.

This is the first time that a flower has been found to mimic the scent of dead insects as opposed to dead vertebrates, according to the new study.

Between 4% and 6% of flowering plants use a "deceptive pollination strategy" in which they lure in pollinators such as insects with a scent, color or touch that suggests a reward, such as nectar, pollen or mating and breeding sites that don't exist, according to a statement. Because pollinators are bad at telling apart real and fake rewards, they will pollinate these plants, or move pollen from the male part of a plant to a female part to allow fertilization.

Related: Hold your nose: 7 foul flowers

Orchids are known to employ this trickery, but other plants have also evolved to play the game, including members of the genus Aristolochia. This plant genus is divided into more than 550 different species that are found around the world, but they are especially abundant in tropical and subtropical regions. These plants are known to imprison pollinators — temporarily — to get pollinated.

"Many Aristolochia species are known to attract flies with floral scents, for example mimicking the smell of carrion or feces of mammals, decaying plants, or fungi," lead author Thomas Rupp, a doctoral student at the Paris Lodron University of Salzburg, in Austria said in a statement. But Rupp and his team focused on a specific species known as Aristolochia microstoma that's endemic to Greece.

"Unlike other Aristolochia with their showy flowers, A. microstoma has inconspicuous brownish flowers that lie horizontally, partly buried or close to the ground among leaf litter or rocks," he said in the statement. "The flowers release an unpleasant, carrion-like smell, noticeable to people at a short distance."

Rupp and his team collected more than 1,450 A. microstoma plant samples from three sites in Greece. Within their flowers, the researchers found 248 arthropods, including flies, centipedes and springtails. They found that the female and male Megaselia flies, also known as coffin flies that feed and lay eggs on animal and insect corpses, were the only arthropods carrying pollen inside the flowers, suggesting they were the typical pollinators, according to the statement.

The researchers then used techniques known as gas chromatography and mass spectrometry to figure out the various individual scents the flowers released. They discovered 16 different compounds that included strong-smelling nitrogen and sulfur compounds.

Among the main components were "oligosulfides," which are compounds commonly produced by many plant species that smell like decomposing meat, according to the statement. But what was surprising to the researchers was that 8% to 47% of this flower's scent was made up of a compound known as 2,5-dimethylpyrazine, which is a "musty scent typical of cooked rice or roasted peanuts," according to the statement. This scent is also found in decomposing beetles and rodent urine — and very few plants are known to produce this compound, according to the statement.

"We show A. microstoma flowers emit a simple but highly unusual mix of scents that includes 2,5-dimethylpyrazine, a molecule that occurs neither in vertebrate carcasses nor in feces, but does occur in dead beetles," coauthor Stefan Wanke, a professor of plant cell and molecular biology at the Dresden University of Technology in Germany, said in the statement. "We conclude that A. microstoma likely uses a strategy that has never been reported before: its flowers mimic the smell of invertebrate carrion to attract and imprison pollinators."

It may also help that their flowers are typically oriented close to the ground, where pollinating coffin flies search for breeding sites or food, he added. 

The findings were published on May 21 in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.

Originally published on Live Science.

Orchids are usually prized for their grace and loveliness, but a newly described species from Madagascar probably won't be winning any beauty contests. Its small flowers are a mottled brown, and it resembles a moldy paper bag (or maybe an eyeless, wormlike head with a mouth gaping in a silent scream or to consume your soul).

It's no wonder that the newfound species has been called "the ugliest orchid in the world" by the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew (RBG Kew) in the United Kingdom, which recently placed the homely newcomer at the top of a list highlighting species discovered in 2020, representatives said in a statement.

The leafless orchid, named Gastrodia agnicellus, grows underground in decaying leaf litter for most of its life cycle, and is nourished by fungus. In addition to the "small, brown and rather ugly" orchid, researchers and collaborators with RBG Kew described more than 150 plants and fungi this year, according to the statement.

Related: 5 surprising facts about orchids 

In 2019, British botanist Johan Hermans, an RBG Kew honorary research associate, found a number of G. agnicellus orchids hiding under leaf litter in a humid Madagascar forest. Their lumpy, oblong shapes hinted that the flower belonged to a group known as potato orchids, and the blooms, which measure about 0.4 inches (1.1 centimeters) in length, emit a "noticeable musk rose-like scent" that intensifies when air temperatures are warmer, Hermans wrote in a study published Nov. 5 in the journal Curtis's Botanical Magazine.

Other newly described species on the list include a scaly, heat-resistant shrub that thrives in Namibian salt pans (Tiganophyton karasense); a Peruvian plant with purple tubers that could be a new food crop (Ipomoea noemana); and a vibrant, colorful bromeliad — a family of tropical, flowering plants that includes the pineapple — from Brazil (Acanthostachys calcicola) that grows on limestone cliffs and may be pollinated by hummingbirds, according to the statement.

"In a challenging and difficult year, it's so thrilling to see botanical and mycological science continue, with a bumper list of incredible newly named species being documented with our collaborators across the world," said Martin Cheek, an RBG Kew botanist and senior scientist within the Identification and Naming department. 

"However, the bleak reality facing us cannot be underplayed: With two in five plants threatened with extinction, it is a race against time to find, identify, name and conserve plants before they disappear," Cheek said. 

Originally published on Live Science.

When their pollen supply runs short, bumblebees bore tiny half-moon-shaped holes in the leaves of flowering plants, causing blooms to appear weeks ahead of schedule. 

Bee-bitten plants bear flowers about two weeks to a month sooner than untouched plants, according to a new study, published today (May 21) in the journal Science. Researchers attempted to recreate these bee-bite patterns using metal forceps and a razor, but even then, the damage inflicted by bees boosted flower production more effectively than the scientists could; bee-bitten plants bloomed eight to 25 days before the artificially damaged ones did, depending on the plant species. 

Some plant species flower early in response to drought, or in response to infections caused by certain pathogens, but few studies have explored how animal behaviors might prompt plants to bloom early, said study author Mark Mescher, a professor of environmental systems science at ETH Zürich. Mescher and his coauthor Consuelo De Moraes, a professor of biocommunication and ecology at ETH Zürich, spotted bumblebees munching on leaves during an unrelated experiment, and they wondered why.

Related: 7 amazing bug ninja skills  

"It started really with observing the behavior," Mescher said. Other researchers told the team that they'd also observed bees biting leaves, anecdotally, but no formal studies had probed why the insects did it, he said. 

In early laboratory experiments, buff-tailed bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) appeared to ramp up this biting behavior when deprived of pollen, a key food source for both bee larvae and the worker bees themselves, the authors noted. To test the hypothesis, the team deprived one group of worker bees of pollen for three days, while a different group was provided "abundant pollen resources." When released into enclosures full of flowerless tomato and black mustard plants, the deprived bees began nibbling at the leaves with gusto. The satiated group, in contrast, inflicted only minor amounts of leaf damage.

To confirm that the hungry bees weren't simply eating the leaves, or carrying bits back to their hive, the authors placed paper cones beneath the plants to catch falling debris. Leaf bits accumulated in the cones, and no leaf residue appeared back at the hive, they noted. The bee-inflicted damage resembles tiny half-moons, carved by the insects' mandibles, or pinprick holes poked out with their proboscises (tubular mouthparts), De Moraes said. "But it's quite quick," with each cut only taking a second or so to complete, she added. 

Related: Naughty by nature: The most disgusting and deadly flowers 

The team observed this biting behavior in both their laboratory bees and wild colonies that visited plants housed on rooftops at the ETH Zürich campus. In the wild bees, the team noted that biting behavior dropped off once the outdoor plants began to flower, bolstering the idea that the bees damage leaves when their available pollen supply runs low. 

While several species of wild bumblebees, including B. terrestris and B. lucorum, ravaged the flowerless foliage, honeybees and common furry bees that visited the roof would not, Mescher noted. "The honeybees just ignored the plants that didn't have any flowers," he said. "Who knows, but I'd be surprised if there were other pollinators [besides bumblebees] that were doing this." 

But why would only bumblebees beat up plants to boost their flower supply? That the scientists don't know yet, they said. Bumblebees do exhibit so-called "nectar-robbing" behaviors, where they slice into plant parts that house nectar beyond the confines of a flower, and the leaf-biting behaviors may be related to that, Mescher said. But we don't know for sure yet. 

Looking forward, the team plans to study precisely how bee-inflicted damage drives plants to bloom early, and whether the same biochemical changes occur in plants subjected to drought, pathogens or other environmental stressors. It may be that fatty acids in bumblebee saliva trigger a reaction in flowering plants, as is true of some caterpillar species, De Moraes said. Alternatively, the bees may release some unknown chemical cue, or else damage the leaves in a highly specific way that scientists cannot yet replicate, she added. 

If cues from bees can accelerate flowering, "scientists might realize a horticulturist's dream by deciphering the molecular pathways through which flowering can be accelerated by a full month," Lars Chittka, a professor of Sensory and Behavioural Ecology at the Queen Mary University of London, wrote in a letter in the journal Science accompanying the new paper.

"An encouraging interpretation of the new findings is that behavioral adaptations of flower visitors can provide pollination systems with more plasticity and resilience to cope with climate change than hitherto suspected," he wrote. In other words, as climate change alters when various plants bloom, understanding how bumblebees influence flowering could help farmers manage their crops. 

•  7 plants you can eat if you're stranded in the wild 
•  7 insects you'll be eating in the future 
•  6 unexpected effects of climate change 

Originally published on Live Science. 

The hills of Southern California will soon be alive with a massive "superbloom" of wildflowers, thanks to an unusually rainy fall and winter, news sources report.

Southern California has been parched by drought in recent years, but Mother Nature served up the perfect recipe for a spectacular mid-March superbloom. First, heavy rains since October have saturated the typically dry ground; second, a cold winter locked that moisture in the dirt, which will help wildflower seeds sprout, according to The Mercury News.

Once the superbloom emerges, visitors should expect to see thousands of wildflowers, including poppies, verbenas, desert sunflowers and evening dune primroses. [Stunning Images of a California Superbloom]

The seeds of these flowers have been lying dormant all winter, but now that temperatures are rising, they'll soon burst into colorful plants, the Mercury News reported.

One of the flower hotspots is Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, located northeast of San Diego in the Colorado Desert. "It's going to be better than it's been in the last dozen or so years," Mike McElhatton, the educational program director of the Anza-Borrego Desert Natural History Association, told AccuWeather.

Southern California's last superbloom happened in 2017, but this one may be even more expansive.

"The rain has hit us nearly perfectly," McElhatton told AccuWeather. "We are going to have a really widespread bloom; in the past, we have seen only small concentrations in select valleys. This year, it already appears that a vast majority of the ... park will be in bloom."

But flowers are always fleeting. So plan ahead if you're going to visit the blooming hills to get that Instagram-perfect photo of blue arroyo lupines, purple Canterbury bells and periwinkle forget-me-nots.

• Flower Photos: Beautiful Begonias
• In Images: Stunning Flower Fields of the Atacama Desert
• In Photos: Beautiful Cactus Flowers Signal Spring Is Here

Originally published on Live Science.

Dinosaurs that lived during the early Jurassic period could stop and smell the flowers if they so desired, according to a new study that describes the oldest fossil flower on record.

The flower, named Nanjinganthus dendrostyla, lived more than 174 million years ago, the researchers said. Until now, the oldest widely accepted evidence of a flowering plant, also known as an angiosperm, dated to the Cretaceous period, roughly 130 million years ago. Meanwhile, a study using a computer model estimated that flowers evolved about 140 million years ago.

"Researchers were not certain where and how flowers came into existence, because it seems that many flowers just popped up in the Cretaceous from nowhere," study lead author Qiang Fu, an associate research professor at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology in China, said in a statement. "Studying fossil flowers, especially those from earlier geologic periods, is the only reliable way to get an answer to these questions." [Photos: Ancient Flowering Plant May Have Lived with Dinosaurs]

To describe the ancient flower, Fu and his colleagues examined 264 specimens from 198 individual flowers that were preserved in rock slabs. These slabs came from the South Xiangshan Formation, a rocky area in China's Nanjing region that contains fossils from the early Jurassic period. The researchers found many detailed fossil specimens of the flower, which they then analyzed with high-powered microscopes.

The flower had spoon-shaped petals and a stalky style that rose out of its center, according to the fossils.

One key feature of angiosperms comes in the "angio-ovuly," or fully enclosed ovules — precursors of seeds, which appear before pollination occurs. The newly discovered N. dendrostyla has a cup-like receptacle and an ovarian roof that come together to enclose the ovules and seeds. This structure confirms that the newfound plant was an angiosperm, the researchers said.

Some of the researchers on the study also took part in a 2015 study about a 160-million-year-old flower, Live Science previously reported. However, that specimen, dubbed Euanthus panii, is controversial because it was found by an amateur fossil collector in China and its age is uncertain.

As for N. dendrostyla, the researchers said they hope it will shed light on the early family tree of flowers. The scientists are still trying to figure out whether N. dendrostyla is monophyletic, which would mean it's part of an early angiosperm group that gave rise to later flower species, or polyphyletic, which would mean it's an evolutionary dead end that has little to do with flowers that sprouted after it.

"The origin of angiosperms has long been an academic headache for many botanists," study senior author Xin Wang, a research professor at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology, said in the statement. "Our discovery has moved the botany field forward and will allow a better understanding of angiosperms, which in turn will enhance our ability to efficiently use and look after our planet's plant-based resources."

The study was published online yesterday (Dec. 18) in the journal eLife.

• Photos: Stinky 'Corpse Flower' Blooms
• Blooming Plants: Spectacular Photos of Dahlias
• In Images: The Oldest Fossils on Earth

Originally published on Live Science.

That's what scientists found after analyzing 70 fossils of wing scales and scale fragments unearthed in northern Germany. These 200-million-year-old fossils, which date to the Triassic-Jurassic boundary, are the oldest evidence on record of insects in the order Lepidoptera, the researchers said.

Some of the fossils share features with modern moths in the suborder Glossata, which have a straw-like proboscis that can suck up fluids like nectar. Given their complexity, and the time it would've taken to evolve to have such complex features, these fossils push the calculated age of glossatan moths back by about 70 million years to the Late Triassic "refuting ancestral association of the group with flowering plants," the researchers wrote in the study. [In Photos: Beautiful Butterflies of the American Deserts]

These days, glossatan moths depend on flowering plants, known as angiosperms, for food. But the world's first flower likely sprouted about 140 million years ago, according to a 2017 study in the journal Nature Communications. If angiosperms didn't exist when early lepidopterans did, it's likely that these flying insects instead fed on gymnosperms — flowerless, seed-producing plants, such as cycads — the researchers said.

If these ancient glossatan moths had proboscises, as their modern-day relatives do, perhaps they used these tubes to suck up pollination drops that gymnosperms produced, the researchers said.

"Similar to angiosperm nectar, the [gymnosperm] sugary droplets offered a high-energy nutritional source, which could attract adult glossatan moths and other Mesozoic proboscate flying insects," the researchers wrote in the study.

The lepidopterans appear to have changed their menu to angiosperms once flowering plants developed, the researchers added.

In addition, the researchers hypothesized why lepidopterans evolved to have a sucking proboscis in the first place, which replaced chewing mouthparts in earlier lineages. The Late Triassic was hot and arid, and lepidopterans may have developed proboscises as an "efficient technique to replenish lost moisture and survive desiccation stress," the researchers wrote in the study.

The study was published online today (Jan. 10) in the journal Science Advances.

Original article on Live Science.

An unexpected rain has caused the world's driest nonpolar desert to burst into bloom.

Chile's Atacama Desert typically gets a mere 0.6 inches (15 millimeters) of rain every year. But unusual rains that fell during the winter in northern Chile led the barren landscape to blossom in August.

Typically, the Atacama becomes an endless field of wildflowers once every five to seven years due to rains from El Niño, a climate cycle in the Pacific Ocean. This rare transformation is known as a "super bloom" and has earned the desert the nickname "desierto florido" ("flowering desert" in Spanish) from locals. [Photos: Colorful Blooms Sprout Across the World's Driest Desert]

The desert holds millions of dormant seeds in its soils. When rain waters these seeds, they can open and take root, eventually growing into flowers that are red, orange, yellow, purple and white.

The last super bloom happened in 2015, and the next one wasn't expected for several more years. But the unexpected rains delivered a rare treat: fragrant flowers ahead of schedule.

The Atacama Desert sits on a 600-mile-long (1,000 kilometers) plateau in northern Chile that borders Peru, Bolivia and Argentina. The harsh, arid land is sparsely populated, but thousands of tourists flock there during super blooms to see the more than 200 floral and wildlife species, Live Science previously reported.

Original article on Live Science.

Introduction

Chile's Atacama Desert, one of the world's driest places, is now flush with flowers after an unexpected rain.

The desert typically gets just 0.6 inches (15 millimeters) of rain a year. Even so, it's earned the name "desierto florido" (flowering desert) from locals because whenever it rains enough, dormant seeds in the soil take root, and burst into a wide array of yellow, orange, green, purple and red.

These "super blooms" typically happen every five to seven years because of El Niño, a climatic cycle in the Pacific Ocean. But the last super blooms sprung up in 2015, making this one a colorful and fragrant surprise.

Yellow posies

The once arid and barren landscape of the desert is now filled with flowers after an intense and surprising rainfall in northern Chile during the winter months. This photo was taken Aug. 17.

Purple fields

These colorful blooms usually attracts thousands of tourists, who travel to see and photograph the more than 200 floral species and native wildlife. This photo was taken Aug. 22.

Mountain backdrop

Yellow and black flowers fill the landscape like a lush, floral carpet.

Research suggests that before the Atacama became an arid desert, it was filled with marshes and lakes.

Popcorn-like flowers

Beautiful white flowers have turned this valley into a speckled white landscape.

Hearty plants

Heavy rains helped millions of seeds take root in the Atacama Desert, the highest and driest nonpolar desert on Earth.

When the world's first flower sprouted about 140 million years ago, it was bisexual, possessing both male and female reproductive parts, according to the researchers who virtually reconstructed the blossom in a new study. 

The discovery of the dinosaur-age posy sheds light on the evolution and diversification of flowering plants, or angiosperms, the largest group of plants on Earth, the researchers said. For instance, the reconstruction shows how the ancient flower differed from its numerous modern descendants.

"The petal-like parts and the stamens [male reproductive organs in a flower] were more numerous than in most living species, and were probably organized in multiple sets of three," said the study's lead researcher, Hervé Sauquet, an associate professor at the Laboratory of Ecology, Systematics and Evolution at the University of Paris-Sud in France. [Photos: Ancient Flowering Plant May Have Lived with Dinosaurs]

There are many mysteries in plant evolution, and Sauquet and his colleagues were determined to solve one of the biggest ones: what the original angiosperm looked like.  

"We know a lot about the evolutionary history of this group, in particular how plant families are related to one another, but we still know very little about how their emblematic structure — the flower — has evolved and diversified since their origin," Sauquet told Live Science in an email. "That's why I decided to join forces with other experts and create the international eFLOWER initiative to tackle these questions."

Because there are no known fossils of the world's oldest angiosperm— the oldest uncontroversial fossil flower dates to about 130 million years ago, a good 10 million years before the likely birth of the earliest flower — Sauquet and his colleagues used a method known as ancestral state reconstruction, he said.

This method uses information from the known evolutionary tree — a diagram showing relationships between flowers based on their similarities and differences — and from the known features of living flowers "to make a guess about the structure of ancestral flowers at different points of divergence in the tree," Sauquet said.

To reveal the first flower's anatomy, the researchers used probabilistic models that would calculate the likelihood of the emergence of certain floral characteristics throughout time. This method allowed them "not only to find out what ancestral flowers were like, but also to measure uncertainty" around the results, Sauquet said.

The results showed that when flowers first popped up on Earth, they went through a series of simplifications in which structures were reduced or merged until the flowers settled on an optimal and stable architecture, he said.

Once flowers achieved this stable architecture, they likely started to diversify and develop other features, such as symmetry, he noted.

However, there is still much to learn about early angiosperms and their environments. For instance, it's unclear which animals might have eaten or pollinated these flowers, although "some authors have speculated that flies might have been among the earliest pollinators of flowers," Sauquet said.

Moreover, studies on fossilized animal poop, known as coprolites, show that certain paleo-beasts munched on angiosperms. For example, an unknown dinosaur — but apparently a large one, judging from the size of its droppings — ate angiosperms about 75 million years ago, according to research presented at the 2015 Society of Vertebrate Paleontology conference in Dallas.

The new study was published online today (Aug. 1) in the journal Nature Communications.

Original article on Live Science.

A programmer recently turned to artificial intelligence to create positively charming images of so-called "botanical dinosaurs," representations of tyrannosaurs, stegosaurs, triceratops and others, all constructed entirely out of flowers.

To generate the unusual effect, coder Chris Rodley used a web app that employs a technique known as style transfer, in which an algorithm "learns" a specific visual style and re-creates an image in that style. In this case, the algorithm re-created a selection of dinosaurs in the style of botanical illustrations, using all the visual elements that you'd expect to find in a field guide to local flora — stems, leaves and blossoms in a variety of colors.

Style transfer isn't new, but the unlikely pairing of dinosaurs and flowers was unusual and eye-catching enough to garner quite a bit of attention online. As of yesterday (June 21), Rodley's June 15 tweet sharing the images has gathered over 32,000 likes and about 14,000 retweets. [Super-Intelligent Machines: 7 Robotic Futures]

A team of programmers developed the style-transfer technique and described it in a paper published online in 2015, and the study authors later made style transfer available to the public through the online platform DeepArt, Rodley told Live Science in an email. He used DeepArt to make the dinosaurs, though there are several online platforms offering style transfer as a service for anyone to try, he said.

"Applying a familiar art style to a photo is what most folks do with this. And the results are often incredible. I guess my contribution was experimenting with using it in a somewhat different way," Rodley said.

The idea for the botanical dinosaurs came from an unexpected type of style transfer in an image that Rodley glimpsed on Reddit, he told Live Science. In the image — a reproduction of the painting "Napoleon Crossing the Alps" by Jacques-Louis David — Reddit user vic8760 re-imagined Napoleon and his horse using images lifted from a crowd scene in an unidentified High Renaissance painting, Rodley wrote in a blog post.

"That example doesn't just change the style of the portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte; it actually reconstitutes the image out of different stuff. Of course, from the point of view of the artificial neural network that makes the image, it is just applying the style," he explained.

In the case of Rodley's dinosaur creations, the art style was botanical illustrations, which the algorithm learned first to recognize and then to apply in such a manner that they conformed to the dinosaurs' original body shapes, he said.

"There's lots of trial and error, and a process of negotiation between what you want and what the AI wants — or at least, what its goals are," Rodley told Live Science. "It's the same thing that stonemasons and patchwork quilt-makers and clarinetists all do — an iterative process of using tools to shape raw materials, seeing what happens, then refining or redoing."

As it happens, Rodley's floral dinosaurs have a famous fine-art precedent that dates back to the 16th century — paintings by the Italian artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo, who created human portraits as assemblies of vegetables. A second composite image, which Rodley also tweeted on June 15, mirrored Arcimboldo even more closely, with dinosaurs' bodies created entirely from 19th-century engravings of fruit.

"Oddly enough, I made a Twitter bot (co-created with my sister, Ali Rodley) which also tweets about things made out of other things, like flamingoes made out of skulls," Rodley told Live Science.

"In both cases, machines came up with an idea that for humans is very hard to conceptualize. Because there aren't many pathways in our brains linking flowers and dinos, I guess," he said.

Original article on Live Science.

yellow-flowers-blue-sky

Yellow flowers paint a bright contrast against the bright blue sky in Anza Borrego State Park in 2017. The area experienced a superbloom thanks to a wet winter.

yellow-flowers

More yellow flowers from Anza Borrego State Park's 2017 superbloom.

yellow-purple-orange-flowers

Fields of yellow, purple and orange flowers carpet the desert in Anza Borrego State Park in March 2017. The area is experiencing an explosion of color thanks to a wet 2017 winter.

yellow-flowers-shiny

Yellow flowers show a burst of color against the rocky landscape of Anza Borrego State Park in March 2017. The area is undergoing a superbloom, thanks to a wet 2017 winter season.

yellow-flowers-valley

A field of yellow flowers paint the valley floor in the harsh desert landscape of Anza Borrego State Park in March 2017. The area has had a burst of flowers thanks to a superbloom from a wet winter.

yellow-flowers-sunset

A yellow flower pops out of the desert in the fading sun in Anza Borrego State Park in March 2017. The area is undergoing a superbloom thanks to the wet winter.

purple-flowers-anza-borrego

Purple flowers fill the background as a lone yellow flower makes itself known in a superbloom taking place in Anza Borrego State Park this March, 2017.

flowers-anza-borrego

Fields of flowers are bursting from the barren desert in Anza Borrego STate Park in Southern California this year, thanks to a wet winter.

anza-borrego-desert

During the dry season, Anza Borrego State Park in Southern California presents a forbidding landscape.

anza-borrego-state-park

A fiery sunset with a rainbow in Anza Borrego State Park

If you've ever played the childhood game of holding a buttercup under your chin to see if you like butter, you might have wondered why the cheery little flowers are the only type that provide the requisite reflection on your skin.

A new study reveals the answer: Buttercups are unique among flowers. Their bright-yellow gloss results from a one-of-a-kind combination of pigments and anatomical structures that create an optical thin film. These films reflect light much like a sheen of oil on a parking-lot puddle, said study leader Casper J. van der Kooi, who studies the reproductive biology of plants and animals at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.  

"Pigmented thin films haven't been found in flowers before," van der Kooi told Live Science. [Optical Illusions: A Gallery of Visual Tricks]

Strange structure

There are about 500 species of buttercup (the genus name is Ranunculus) found all over the world, van der Kooi said. Their gloss has fascinated researchers for more than 100 years, he said; in preparing the new study, van der Kooi found papers dating back to 1900 about how buttercup color works.

"I've been working on flower color for a few years now, and what you see in the majority of plant species is that they have flowers that have a diffuse reflection, so the reflection is pretty angle-independent. You see a blue or yellow flower from whatever angle you look at," van der Kooi said, citing earlier research he and his colleagues conducted. "The buttercup is a clear exception to this rule because it has a mirror-like reflection."

To study this flower anomaly, van der Kooi and his colleagues analyzed buttercups from meadows around Groningen in the Netherlands. They used photography and scanning electron microscopy to examine the petal anatomy.

What they found was a flower with a structure never seen before. The top layer of the buttercup petal, the epidermal layer, is ultrasmooth and contains pigments that absorb blue light (leaving longer-wavelength yellow light to reflect back to the eye). The epidermal layer is a mere single cell thick, and it's anchored lightly to a starch layer below, the researchers said. Between the epidermal layer and the starch are pockets of air, they added.

A glossy sheen

The interference between the smooth, single-cell epidermis and the airy layer below is what creates the thin-film effect, van der Kooi said. Wavelengths moving through the different layers interact in such a way to create a shiny, mirror-like effect. Oil slicks and soap bubbles get their shine from the same mechanism, van der Kooi said.

But buttercups also use pigments to great effect, according to van der Kooi. The light that isn't absorbed by the pigments in the epidermal layer, or the light that is bounced back, ends up passing through and hitting the starch layer below the air pockets. This starch layer has a scattering effect, van der Kooi said. The light is scattered back through the pigmented layer, intensifying the yellow color.

"The pigment is used twice, basically," van der Kooi said. It's used once as the light hits the epidermal layer, and then again when the light is scattered back.

Many animal species, particularly birds and butterflies, use thin films to create iridescent or glossy colors, van der Kooi said. So why might buttercups stand out in the plant kingdom as the only ones to possess these structures?

There are a couple of possibilities, van der Kooi said. On sunny days, when the buttercup petals are spread wide to the sky, their glossiness may create a "flash" effect for passing insects, like a mirror reflecting a beam of sunlight. This might make the flowers stand out to pollinators, he said.

The buttercups also might be acting as their own space heaters. On overcast days, the researchers observed that buttercups close into a cup-like shape but also tilt their blossoms to follow what sunlight they can catch. (This is called heliotrophy.) The effect is to reflect light waves not toward the sky, but internally, toward the plant's reproductive organs. This raises the temperature of the blossom's center, which may promote pollen or seed maturation, van der Kooi said. Warm flowers are also preferred by some pollinators.

Ultimately, this basic research may inform conservation strategies in a world where many pollinators, including some bees, are struggling, van der Kooi said. It's also important to understand how such biodiversity in flowers arose, he said.

"The diversity in flower colors is enormous," van der Kooi said. "We try to link this to pollinator vision to understand how pollinators and their vision shaped color diversity as we see it now."

The researchers report their findings today (Feb. 21) in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.

Original article on Live Science. 

Music icon Jimi Hendrix is famous for his many songs, including "Purple Haze" and "The Wind Cries Mary," but now he'll also be remembered for an entirely different reason: Botanists have named a newly discovered species of rare, flowery succulent after him, a new study reports.

The plant, named Dudleya hendrixii, is found only in a sliver of Baja California, Mexico, in an area called the Colonet Peninsula (known as Punta Colonet in Spanish). D. hendrixii is thin and stalky, and typically grows to be about 1 foot (0.3 meters) tall. The plant has succulent leaves and flowers that are hot pink and white, said study co-author Mark Dodero, who discovered the plant while in graduate school at San Diego State University. Dodero now works as a senior biologist at San Diego environmental consulting firm RECON Environmental.

Dodero and study co-author Stephen McCabe, a retired botanist formerly at the University of California, Santa Cruz, jointly decided to name the plant in Hendrix's honor. The idea for the name took root after Dodero realized he was listening to Hendrix's song "Voodoo Child" at the very moment he found the pinkish plant. Hendrix died in 1970 at the age of 27. [In Photos: Plants in Danger of Disappearing]

D. hendrixii is a summer deciduous, meaning it dies in the summer and regrows in the fall, the researchers said.

Although D. hendrixii is a new addition to the science world, it already needs the help of scientists and conservationists. That's because its habitat, which is only a couple of acres, is threatened by grazing, farmers, off-road traffic and housing developments, the researchers said.

"It's the Mexican equivalent of an endangered species, although they don't use the same criteria we do in the United States," study co-author Michael Simpson, a plant biologist at San Diego State University, said in a statement.

Punta Colonet may soon be home to a major shipping port, which would further imperil the area's fragile environment, according to the researchers. In order to protect the newfound species, they're urging Mexican officials and conservation groups to protect D. hendrixii, they said.

D. hendrixii is hardly the only species name inspired by music. For instance, the damselfly Umma gumma is named for the 1969 Pink Floyd double album "Ummagumma," which is British slang for sex, Live Science reported in May. In addition, the tarantula Aphonopelma johnnycashi is named for singer and songwriter Johnny Cash, because the spider's dark coloring reminded researchers of Cash's head-to-toe black attire, Live Science reported in February.

The new findings were published in the October issue of the journal Madroño.

Original article on Live Science.

Normally, the smell of putrefying, decaying flesh wouldn't be cause for celebration, but it is today, with the blooming of the rare but stinky corpse flower at the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG).

Horticulturalists have been eyeing the flower since July 15, when they spied a bud on the rare plant. Corpse flowers bloom only once every seven to 10 years, and this is the first time that this particular plant has blossomed since the NYBG acquired it in 2007, they said.

As soon as the bud began to open last night (July 28), NYBG representatives took to Twitter to announce the good news, saying, "Your eyes aren't playing tricks on you. Our corpse flower (finally) started blooming! More info shortly." [Photos: Stinky 'Corpse Flower' Blooms]

The garden announced it would extend its summer hours from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. EDT so that guests could get a glimpse (and a whiff) of the stinky flower. Garden officials encouraged patrons to visit soon since, as they tweeted, "Bloom cycle is expected to last 24–36 hours, so tomorrow (Friday, July 29) should also be a great time to see it!"

Scientists call corpse flowers Amorphophallus titanum, a name that translates to "giant misshapen phallus." The plants are native to hot and humid Sumatra, Indonesia, and are among the world's tallest flowers, standing between 6 and 12 feet (2 and 4 meters) high, the NYBG said.

In fact, the plant has several flowers, which cluster around the base of the stalk, but are hidden by the dark red "skirt," which isn't a petal but a modified leaf, according to the NYBG.

As the flowers unfold, they release their signature stench — the smell of decaying flesh — that attracts flesh-eating insects, including dung beetles and flesh flies. If these insects successfully pollinate the plant, the flowers will develop red fruit, which visitors can see as the "skirt" withers, NYBG said.

In the wild, birds and other animals will eat and spread the fruit, inadvertently planting new corpse flowers far and wide, garden experts said.

The blossoms may be short-lived, but people can watch the corpse flower on an NYBG live stream.

Almost 80 years has passed since the last corpse flower bloomed at the NYBG, in 1939. But it's far from the only blooming prima donna in the country. People can also see live-stream videos of corpse flowers at the U.S. Botanic Garden in Washington, D.C., and at Indiana University. Both of which are expected to bloom within the next few days.

Original article on Live Science.

The stench of rotting flesh will soon permeate the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG), possibly today (July 25), when a rare plant known as a corpse flower blooms and releases an odor similar to that of putrefying flesh, botanists say.

Despite the stench, horticulturalists and the public are flocking to see it, partly because the corpse flower (Amorphophallus titanum — a scientific name that translates to "giant misshapen phallus") blooms only for a few days once every seven to 10 years, representatives from the NYBG said.

"Perhaps [people come] because it is one of the largest flowers in the world, and its blooming cycle is unpredictable," NYBG representatives said in a statement. "But more likely, it is due to the infamous odor it releases during its brief 24- [to] 36-hour peak bloom — like the smell of rotting meat." [Photos: Stinky 'Corpse Flower' Blooms]

NYBG horticulturalists spotted a bud on the rare flower on July 15 and moved the plant to public display on July 18. The enormous specimen is now attracting crowds at the Palms of the World Gallery, NYBG reps said.

People who can't make it to the garden in the Bronx can watch a live stream of the corpse flower on YouTube, NYBG representatives added.

The botanical garden has a lengthy history with corpse flowers. The 6- to 12-foot-tall (about 2 to 4 meters) plant is native to Sumatra, Indonesia, but one bloomed at the NYBG in 1937, making it the first time a corpse flower had bloomed in the Western Hemisphere, according to the NYBG. The last time one bloomed there was in 1939, horticulturists said.

From the moment a bud appears, the plant undergoes an impressive transformation.

At the beginning of the bloom cycle, the bud grows 4 to 6 inches (10 to 15 centimeters) per day. Then, parts of the bud's base fall off, and the large, frilly sheath that covers the bud opens, revealing a dark burgundy color that looks like a bloody body, NYBG reps said. Just like rotting flesh, the center of the flower is hot, about the temperature of a person — likely to help disperse the stink, they said.

The flower's sickly smell attracts pollinators, such as dung beetles, flesh flies and other carnivorous insects, which eat dead animals. People may be familiar with some of the scents, including timethylamine, a molecule that smells like rotting fish, National Geographic reported. The magazine added that another substance made by the corpse flower, isovaleric acid, smells like cheesy and sweaty gym socks. These putrid odors are smelliest when the flower reaches peak bloom, the NYBG reps said.

The garden acquired the soon-to-be star in 2007 and expects it will take another decade or so before it blooms again.

However, the garden's corpse flower isn't the only putrid plant in the United States. People can also watch live-stream videos of a corpse flower at the U.S. Botanic Garden in Washington, D.C., and at Indiana University.

Original article on Live Science.

Delicate, though possibly deadly, flowers trapped in amber for some 30 million years have been discovered, scientists report.

The fossilized plants are asterids, which make up about one-third of the world's flowering plants. About 80,000 species fall under this taxonomic clade, including coffee trees, tomato plants, mint, basil and tobacco. Despite the ubiquity of asterids today, no fossilized examples of the plants have been found until now, the researchers say. 

The two flower specimens, which have been named Strychnos electri, belong to the same genus as poisonous plants that have been used to make lethal, paralyzing substances like strychnine and curare. [Images: Amazing Ancient Life Trapped in Dominican Amber]

"Species of the genus Strychnos are almost all toxic in some way," George Poinar Jr., an amber expert at Oregon State University, said in a statement. "Each plant has its own alkaloids with varying effects. Some are more toxic than others, and it may be that they were successful because their poisons offered some defense against herbivores."

Scientists have identified about 200 species of Strychnosplants. One of the most famous representatives of this genus might be Strychnos nux-vomica, from which strychnine is derived. Strychnine has been used in rat poison, but it has also cropped up as a weapon in Agatha Christie novels, and Norman Bates used the poison to kill his mother in Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho." Strychnine poisoning was even proposed as a possible cause of Alexander the Great's death.

Curare —which contains the toxin tubocurarine, extracted from the plant Strychnos toxifera — has a storied history as well. Hunters in South America used the poison to make paralyzing blow darts (witnessed as early as the 16th century by the English explorer Sir Walter Raleigh). More recently, safe doses of the poison have been used in medicine as a muscle relaxer.

It's not clear how toxic (if at all) the newly discovered Strychnos electri was. These two new flowers became entombed in sticky tree resin in a steamy tropical forest in what is today the Cordillera Septentrional mountain range in the Dominican Republic some 20 million to 30 million years ago.

Amber, which is hardened tree resin, is an important source of knowledge about tiny prehistoric life on Earth. In Dominican amber in particular, scientists have discovered species of wasps, locusts, ticks, blood-sucking flies and beetles suspended in time.

The new flower findings were reported yesterday (Feb. 15) in the journal Nature Plants.

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Sacred Datura (Datura wrightii) is a night-blooming herbaceous perennial that is common in the arid regions of the United States, Baja and northern Mexico.

Important and dangerous

It is a member of the family Solanaceae (the Nightshade Family) that contains species of great agricultural importance (tomatoes, eggplants and potatoes) as well as species that are extremely poisonous. (Credit: Linda & Dr. Dick Buscher)

Widespread flora

The Datura genus actually contains nine different species whose range extends throughout the temperate and tropical regions of the world. The word "datura" is derived from the Hindu word "dhatura" which means "thorn apple." (Credit: Linda & Dr. Dick Buscher)

Dangerous beauty

Toxic hallucinogens are found in most parts of a datura plant and can cause delirious behavior and even death in foraging animals, as well as humans. (Credit: Linda & Dr. Dick Buscher)

Many names

Sacred Datura is commonly found anywhere from sea level up to an elevation up to 7,000 feet (2,130 meters) along the arroyos, washes and sandy flats of these arid lands. Other common names for this most unique plant are moon flowers, thorn apple, moon lily, moon flower, Indian apple, angel's trumpet, devil's trumpet, tolguacha, locoweed and Jimson weed. (Credit: Linda & Dr. Dick Buscher)

Strong roots

Sacred Datura can grow 2 to 3 feet (0.6 to 0.9 m) high and can reach 6 to 8 feet (1.8 to 2.4 m) across. It has a large, fleshy taproot. The leaves have smooth margins and are alternately arranged on strong, stout stems. The leaves' color is a deep medium green on top and with a gray-green underside. The leaves have an unpleasant odor. (Credit: NPS)

Fantastic hues

During the growing season, a Sacred Datura plant produces dozens of large, fragrant trumpet-shaped flowers. Most often the flowers are a rich white in color with occasional light lavender hues highlighting the margins. (Credit: Linda & Dr. Dick Buscher)

Night owls

Flowers of Sacred Datura are 6 to 8 inches (15 to 20 centimeters) in diameter and have five slender teeth on their edge. They open in the early evening and close by noon of the following day. (Credit: Linda & Dr. Dick Buscher)

Doing the work

Since this is a night-blooming plant, its flowers must be pollinated by nocturnal visitors. Various species of sphinx and hawk moths are common pollinators. During the early morning hours, species of bees and even hummingbirds aid in the life-sustaining process. (Credit: NPS)

Spreading the love

The seedpods that result from fertilization are globe-shaped and very spiny. When ripe, they split open and release semicircular, flattened, yellow-brown seeds. (Credit: Linda & Dr. Dick Buscher)

Significant to many

Sacred Datura is used by some Native American cultures in religious ceremonies. Medicine men, holy men, spiritualists and even self-proclaimed witches have used it since ancient times. Accidental ingestion by animals or humans seldom occurs, because all parts of the plant are extremely bitter. (Credit: Linda & Dr. Dick Buscher)

Beauty and bitterness

The dichotomy between the beautiful trumpet flowers of Sacred Datura and its poisonous, alkaloid parts makes this a gift of nature that can be enjoyed for its floral beauty, while always cautiously respecting its potential danger. (Credit: Linda & Dr. Dick Buscher)

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Common mullein, Verbascum thapsus, is a perennial herb that was first introduced into the United States in the mid-1700s by colonies in Virginia and was used as a piscicide, a chemical substance that is poisonous to fish. Check out these photos of this fascinating herb. (Credit: Linda & Dr. Dick Buscher)

Long history

Common mullein quickly spread across the United States and southern Canada because it grows in most environments that have an annual rainfall of 3 to 6 inches (8 to 15 centimeters) and at least 140-day growing seasons.

Ancient medicine

Common mullein is native to the Mediterranean countries and Eurasia. It has played a major role as a medicinal herb throughout these regions for thousands of years. Once it arrived on the North American continent, the Native American people quickly learned to use common mullein’s many healing properties.

Young-uns

In its first year of growth, the common mullein forms a large basal rosette with its large leaves that can grow up to 1 foot long (30.5 cm). The plants grow well in disturbed landscapes, such as along roadsides, railroad tracks and once-cultivated fields. Common mullein also grows especially well in alkaline soil.

A lifetime

In its second year of growth, the common mullein will produce a large, erect flower stalk that can grow from 2 to 8 feet (0.6 to 2.4 meters) tall. This rigid stalk is covered with wooly, branched hairs. Alternating leaves, smaller than the rosette leaves, attach directly to the stem in such a pattern as to direct rainwater down the stem to the plant's roots.

Deeps roots

Common mullein has a deep taproot surrounded by a circular pattern of fibrous, secondary roots that grow near the surface of the soil.   

Bunny ears

These plants are known for the softness of their light green leaves, which are known locally as "bunny ears" or "flannel leaf."  The leaves' softness is created by a dense pattern of short hairs that cover both the upper and lower surfaces. The leaves of a first-year plant spread, forming a circle along the ground that provides for the most possible sunlight to fall upon them.

Multiple uses

The leaves of common mullein have been used as lamp wicks as well as toilet paper. The leaves were once placed inside of shoes to provided both warmth and softness. The dried leaves on the long stalk have been used since the time of the Romans for torches (once they had been dipped into tallow). Legend states that such torches were used by witches or were used to repel witches, giving rise to one of its many common names of "hag taper."

Blooms

At the end of the rigid stalk, five-petaled yellow flowers that measure 0.25 to 1 inch (0.6 to 2.5 cm) across haphazardly bloom from a dense, club-shaped terminal flower cluster. Blooming occurs from June to September, making common mullein one of the most-seen wildflowers in the world.  

Calling all bugs

Local insects are attracted by a honeylike scent and become the pollinators of common mullein. A capsule, as seen above, develops after pollination and contains a large number of tiny, dark brown seeds. A single common mullein plant can produce between 100,000 to 180,000 seeds. Seeds fall near the base of the parent plant and can lay dormant yet viable in the soil for many years. 

Easy to see

The dried, dead flowering stalks of common mullein are easily spotted contrasting with the normally green environment.  Seeds are now scattered by the blowing wind and are considered to be poisonous. Grazing animals do not eat common mullein because the many, tiny hairs that cover the stalk and leaves irritate the mucous membranes of mammals.

Useful plant

Early North American settlers brought the plant with them from Europe because of its many uses. Tea tinctures from the plant help to suppress coughs, aid in curing diarrhea and, when dried and smoked, has a stimulant for the lungs. The plant is also touted to aid with hemorrhoids as well as migraine headaches and arthritis.

What's in a name?

Just how common mullein got its name remains up for debate. Perhaps its name comes from the Latin word "mollis," which means "soft." Or, maybe it comes from the Latin word "Mulandrum," as it was once thought to be a cure for leprosy. This ancient herb is known by many regional names, such as the Roman name "Jupiter’s staff." Other names by which this plant is known include "Aaron’s rod," "Jacob’s staff" and "Flannel-leaf."

Threatening the world

Common mullein has become an invasive plant in many parts of the world today. It threatens natural meadows as well as well as any opening found within a forest, and once established, it is very difficult to eradicate.

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A tiny flower pressed between layers of sandstone for more than 160 million years could be the oldest flower fossil ever found, a new study reports.

However, not everyone agrees that the fossil represents an actual flower or that it is as old as the study claims.

Like modern flowers, the fossil sports sepals and petals, the researchers said. However, its age of 162 million years puts it smack in the Jurassic period, and in the middle of a passionate debate over the origin of angiosperms, the world's most successful and diverse group of plants. Did angiosperms first bloom in the Cretaceous period, or were they around earlier, in the Jurassic period, the heyday of giant, plant-eating dinosaurs like Apatosaurus?

"People will have to rethink everything about angiosperms because of this fossil," said study co-author Xin Wang, a paleobotanist at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology in China.

Missing branches

Much of the natural history of angiosperms, or flowering plants, seems to be missing from the fossil record. According to fossils, the first plants on land were mosses, which emerged about 425 million years ago. The ferns were next, followed by gymnosperms — a group that includes cycads, gingkoes and pine trees. Then, about 125 million years ago, angiosperms and their flowers sprang forth during the Cretaceous period, as fully formed as Aphrodite. Within 30 million years, angiosperms would dominate the Earth. [Naughty by Nature: Photos of the Most Disgusting and Deadly Flowers]

Botanists have long wondered how angiosperms and flowers could suddenly flourish without leaving any traces of their ancestry. Charles Darwin called it "an abominable mystery." Scientists also want to understand the history of this important lineage, because without flowering plants, humans wouldn't have corn or rice, or medicines like morphine.

There are hints that angiosperms may have blossomed before their first fossils appear in rocks 125 million years ago. Molecular clocks based on plant DNA suggest angiosperms' origins could extend back to the Jurassic or even earlier, into the Triassic. Tiny pollen grains with angiosperm features have also been sifted out of rocks from these ancient eras. (To be classified as an angiosperm, a plant must have an enclosed, egg-producing carpel, stamens with pollen sacs and other traits.)

Because flowers are fragile and not easily preserved as fossils, perhaps the evidence of absence is simply an absence of evidence. Maybe angiosperms were the mammals of the Mesozoic — tiny and small, waiting on the sidelines to take over the world, said David Winship Taylor, a plant evolutionary biologist who is head of biology and curator of the herbarium at Indiana University Southeast in New Albany.

"My own feeling is that we're not looking correctly," said Taylor, who was not involved in the research. Taylor thinks early angiosperms were small plants, similar to flowering herbs. "I suspect that the angiosperms had tiny pollen and we're missing it," he told Live Science.

Either way, the newly reported fossil is unlikely to sway strong opinions on either side of the debate. To claim a Jurassic-age flower, researchers need to be absolutely sure of its timing, and in this case, that's impossible. The specimen was collected more than 40 years ago by Kwang Pan, a coal engineer who became a self-taught fossil expert after he was sent to the remote village of Sanjiaocheng, in China's Liaoning province, Wang said. Pan donated the fossil to the researchers.

Paleobotanists are leery of claims regarding the 'oldest flower fossil', because the field was recently burned by a misdated fossil. In 2002, other scientists reported a 144-million-year-old Archaefructus angiosperm fossil from China, which made a splashy debut on the cover of the journal Science, but the fossil was later redated to 124.6 million years old.

"This is our strongest evidence of Jurassic angiosperms that we have at this time, but it is tentative," Taylor said of the new fossil. "If this was in the Cretaceous, no one would be arguing about it, but because it's in the Jurassic, you need to have more evidence."

Rare find

Wang said that Pan carefully documented his collections, and fossils and volcanic ash found in the same rock layers confirm the flower was entombed during the Jurassic period. The fossil was named Euanthus panii; the first name is Latin for "real flower," and the second name is in honor of Pan.

"I believe that as more fossils are documented from the Jurassic or earlier times, we will develop a new picture of angiosperm evolution that is completely different than what we had for the last 100 years," Wang said.

Wang and lead author Zhong-Jian Liu, of the National Orchid Conservation Center of China, published a description of the fossil online March 16 in the journal Historical Biology.

The E. panii flower is tiny — just a half-inch wide and tall (12 by 12.7 millimeters). But it has derived traits (traits that recently appeared on the angiosperm family tree). There are male and female reproductive organs, such as sepals, anthers and a stigma with a receptive surface for pollen, the study reported. Its separate petals are arranged like those of lilies or poppies. For the botany-minded, Wang said the flower displays a unique characteristic of angiosperms: a four-part anther that contains pollen grains.

"You don't need to know much about botany. You can recognize it's a flower," Wang said.

But the details weren't convincing for several scientists Live Science contacted about the study. For instance, Patrick Herendeen, an evolutionary plant biologist and senior scientist at the Chicago Botanic Garden, said he thinks the fossil is not a flower. "I am completely unconvinced as to their interpretations of the fossil," Herendeen told Live Science in an email interview. "I do not know what the fossil is, but I certainly do not see what they are reporting."

Editor's note: This story was updated April 9 to correct when ferns first appear in the fossil record, a reference to eudicots, and the description of flower reproductive organs.

Follow Becky Oskin @beckyoskin. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on Live Science.

In a matter of days, perhaps hours, a rare corpse flower will bloom in upstate New York. True to its name, the plant is expected to unleash a stench like rotting flesh.

Affectionately called "Wee Stinky," this corpse flower lives in a greenhouse at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Horticulturists at the school, who have been preparing for the plant to bloom for weeks, say it could open up any day now. Those curious can watch the rare spectacle online, mercifully, without the smell.

The species, also known as titan arum, is found in the rainforests of central Sumatra. The plant's bloom is just as short as it is pungent; corpse flowers only remain open for 24 to 48 hours before they wither away. [In Images: A Corpse Flower Blooms]

Wee Stinky had been dormant for more than two years, but last month, it became clear that the plant was ready to bloom again, according to Cornell's titan arum blog. The corpse flower started growing quickly. As of this morning, it measured more than 6 feet tall (1.8 meters). On Oct. 23, the plant wasn't even 2 feet tall (0.6 m).

It's hard to predict the exact day a titan arum will bloom, but Cornell's experts wrote that Wee Stinky's growth will slow and its outer layers will start to peel away right before it opens. To provide a sense of what this year's brief bloom might look like, Cornell has put together a time-lapse video of the first (and last) flowering of Wee Stinky. That bloom began on March 18, 2012, and lasted less than 48 hours. More than 10,000 visitors flocked to the greenhouse over five days to catch a glimpse (and perhaps a whiff) of the titan arum.

The open bloom may look like a single giant flower, but technically, it isn't. The plant's purple "petals" actually make up an outer skirt called a spathe, and the tubelike spike at its center is called a spadix. These structures have thousands of little flowers called an inflorescence.

Smelling like death actually helps this plant species survive. The fetid stench lures important pollinators like flesh-eating beetles and flies. The spadix heats up at the beginning of the bloom — becoming as warm as a human body — to help spread the odor.

Horticulturists at Cornell acquired a year-old seedling in 2002 that grew into Wee Stinky. A corpse flower may not bloom for the first time until it is about 10 years old. But after that, it could open up again every few years. 

The bloom is a research opportunity for scientists at Cornell. Sensors on and above the blooming plant will collect data on the temperature and the volatiles that simulate the cues of a rotting corpse and attract pollinators.

Currently, Cornell's Kenneth Post Laboratory Greenhouses are open to the public from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. EST, but visiting hours will be extended once the flower blooms.

Follow Megan Gannon on Twitter. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

The killer meteorite that extinguished the dinosaurs also torched North America's forests and plants. The harsh conditions after the impact favored fast-growing flowering plants, nudging forests toward a new pecking order, a new study reports.

As a result, today's forests would baffle a Brachiosaurus. Most of the slow-growing trees and shrubs munched by dinosaurs are minor players in modern forests, because the plants couldn't adapt to post-impact climate swings, researchers report today (Sept. 16) in the journal PLOS Biology.

"When you look at forests around the world today, you don't see many forests dominated by evergreen flowering plants," lead study author Benjamin Blonder said in a statement. "Instead, they are dominated by deciduous species, plants that lose their leaves at some point during the year."

Dinosaurs stomped through forests ruled by evergreen angiosperms, which never drop leaves. Angiosperms are flowering plants, grasses and trees, excluding conifers like spruce and pine. The dinosaur-era angiosperms included ancient relatives of holly, rhododendrons and sandalwood. Other plants in the ancient forests included beeches, cycads, gingkoes, ferns and palm trees. [See Photos of a Fossilized Forest in the Canadian Arctic]

Fossil records show that angiosperms of all kinds thrived before a meteorite or asteroid crashed into Earth 66 million years ago. That stupendous blast charred vast woodlands that had grown from Canada to New Mexico. In North America, about 60 percent of plant species went extinct, according to earlier studies.

After the blaze, deciduous angiosperms, which drop their leaves seasonally, bounced back much better than the evergreens.

Blonder, an ecologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson, wanted to know why the deciduous angiosperms outcompeted their evergreen cousins during the cold, dark years after the impact (called an impact winter). The researchers pored through thousands of prehistoric leaves from Wyoming's Hell Creek Formation. The fossilized leaves spanned the impact, from the last 1.4 million years of the Cretaceous Period through the first 800,000 years of the Tertiary Period.

Based on their analysis, the researchers said the properties of the plant leaves likely helped them withstand the bleak climate. The impact winter pushed ecosystems toward plants with faster growing strategies, Blonder told Live Science in an email interview. "Leaves represent a drain on a plant's resources when photosynthesis can't occur. Thus, deciduous species should be favored over evergreen species," he said.

The researchers analyzed leaf mass per area, which indicates how much carbon a plant invests in growing a leaf. "[This] tells us whether the leaf was a chunky, expensive one to make for the plant, or whether it was a more flimsy, cheap one," Blonder said. The scientists also looked at leaf vein density, a measure of how fast a plant takes up carbon.

"Our study provides evidence of a dramatic shift from slow-growing plants to fast-growing species," Blonder said. "This tells us that the extinction was not random. And, potentially, this also tells us why we find that modern forests are generally deciduous and not evergreen."

Email Becky Oskin or follow her @beckyoskin. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Beautiful begonias

With so much of the Northern Hemisphere being engulfed with the cold of winter, a look at what the promise of nature holds in just a few short months might help in surviving another wintry day. A perfect symbol of the summer to come must surely be the marvelous blooms of begonias.

Spectacular blooms

The blooms of tuberous begonias produce some of the most spectacular floral displays during the summer and early fall months. Their flowers come in every color except blue and range from single to full double blooms. These amazing flowers range in size from blossoms of 0.5 inch (1.3 centimeters) in diameter to the size of a standard dinner plate. Some flowers are scented and some even have petals tipped with differently colored edges.

Their native home

Begonias are native to the warm, moist forests of tropical and subtropical lands of Asia, Africa and South and Central America. They are members of the Begoniaceae family and more than 1,400 species have been identified. Some species have been domesticated and have become spectacular indoor houseplants.

Types in nature

There are three types of begonias found in nature. Fibrous begonias include species known as wax and angel wing begonias and are best suited for outdoor growth. Rhizomatous begonias have spectacular foliage but their blooms are considered to be insignificant. Tuberous begonias, whose flowers are pictured in this story, produce beautiful, large flowers and often resemble a fully opened rose when in full bloom.

A discovery made

The discovery of begonias is credited to Charles Plumier, a Franciscan monk, who came across the beautiful flowers while exploring Brazil in 1690. Father Plumier was involved with an exploration party in search of medicinal plants in the rainforests. He named the flowering plant after the then French governor of Haiti, Michel Begon, who was Father Plumier’s favorite New World botanist.

The first of such honors

Father Plumier’s decision to name begonias after another botanist was the first time such an honor had been bestowed and it began a worldwide tradition for naming new plant species. The name begonia became permanent for the species in 1753 when Carl Linnaeus used it in his book "Species Plantarum."

Many uses

In China, begonias were used as medicine to stop swelling, ease an upset stomach, slow the symptoms of a cold and disinfect skin wounds. Other nations were known to use the beautiful begonia to ease burns, cure kidney ailments and stop a toothache.

The birds and the bees...

Begonias are monoecious, having both unisexual female and male flowers blooming on the same plant. Female flowers have a large inferior ovary while the male flower contains multiple stamens. The leaves of most begonia species are large and many are variegated. Leaf arrangement is most commonly asymmetric.

Yummy for the tummy

Begonias have been used for centuries as a food source. Both leaves and flowers can be cooked or eaten raw and are a great source of vitamin C. The beautiful flowers are scattered on top of salads in China, Indonesia and Brazil. The stems of tuberous begonias are similar in flavor and taste to rhubarb. Indonesians make a sauce from begonias and pour it over fish dishes.

Beautiful blooms

Native begonias grow best in shady, moist environments. Modern hybrids have now been produced to grow well in both drought conditions as well as in full sunlight. So if winter's grip seems to be relentless, just hang on, for summer will be coming once again and so too will the beautiful blooms of begonias.

Beautiful and fragrant blue petunias get their unusual color from a molecular defect in the system that controls the acidity of the plants' cells.

A new study reveals this defect in full, solving the decades-long mystery of the flowers' prized color. The quest to understand the blue petunias also revealed a new cellular "pump" in plants that researchers had never seen before. That finding could lead to the manipulation of color in other flowers and to new flavors in fruits, wines and juices, researchers report today (Jan. 2) in the journal Cell Reports.

Most petunias are red or violet, so scientists did not understand why some bloomed blue. Early in the 19th century, researchers tried to explain the color. One theory held that the petals of blue petunias were less acidic, which somehow altered their hue. Another suggested that something was off in the formation of the chemicals that give flowers their color. [Flower Photos: The Beautiful Rose]

"Our current opinion is that both got it right," study researcher Francesca Quattrocchio of the VU-University in Amsterdam said in a statement.

Quattrocchio and her colleagues investigated the molecular makeup of the cells in the petunia petals. Cells move materials across their membranes with the help of tiny pumps; these pumps also enable them to balance their pH, or level of acidity.

Petal cells are known for big differences in pH in various compartments of cells. The new study reveals a previously unknown pump that moves protons, positively charged particles, across membranes. This pump is unlike other cellular pumps in plants, because it allows acidity to build up more than any other type of cell pump, explaining the big pH gradients in petal cells. In blue petunias, the researchers found, genetic defects skew this pumping system so this hyperacidity does not occur.

These genes are likely important in other plants, too, the researchers wrote, and the pumps they code for probably appear outside of petals. Tobacco plants, for example, express these genes in their stems, buds and roots, though the function in those tissues is unknown.

The discovery of the new pumps and their genetic underpinnings could be applied to engineering new flower colors or altering the flavors of fruits. But being blue may not be great for petunias; the color is less likely than red or violet to attract pollinators such as bees, the researchers wrote.

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.

Newfound fossils hint that flowering plants arose 100 million years earlier than scientists previously thought, suggesting flowers may have existed when the first known dinosaurs roamed Earth, researchers say.

Flowering plants are now the dominant form of plant life on land, evolving from relatives of seed-producing plants that do not flower, such as conifers and cycads.

"Flowering plants were the last group of plants appearing in Earth's history," said Peter Hochuli, a paleobotanist at the University of Zürich's Paleontological Institute and Museum and a co-author of the new study. "They are an extremely successful group on which all terrestrial ecosystems today depend, including the existence of humanity."

Flowering plants, or angiosperms, became the dominant plants about 90 million years ago, when the dinosaurs still roamed the Earth. However, the exact time when these plants originated remains hotly debated.

Now, scientists have unearthed ancient pollen grains with microscopic features typically seen in flowering plants. These well-preserved fossils, discovered in two core samples drilled in northern Switzerland, are about 245 million years old, dating back to the earliest known dinosaur in the Middle Triassic period. [See Images of the Earliest Known Dinosaur]

"Our findings suggest that the origin of flowering plants is rooted much deeper than originally thought," Hochuli told LiveScience.

Pollen grains are small, robust and numerous. This makes them easier to find in the fossil record than comparably large and fragile leaves and flowers. After analyzing the structure of these grains, the researchers suggested that the associated plants werepollinated by insects — most likely beetles, as bees did not evolve until about 100 million years later.

Six different types of pollen were found in the ancient samples, revealing that flowering plants back then may have been considerably diverse. The researchers have seen these pollen grains in both Switzerland and the Barents Sea, north of Scandinavia. However, back in the Middle Triassic, both areas were located in the subtropics, and the region that is now Switzerland was much drier than the Barents Sea region, suggesting the flowering plants spanned a broad range of environments.

The fossil record of flowering plants is continuous, dating back 140 million years. Until now, the fossil record of flowering plants suggested they dominated the planet rather quickly after their earliest appearance. "This sudden appearance has bothered scientists ever since Darwin, who called the origin of flowering plants an 'abominable mystery,'" Hochuli said.

These newfound fossils reveal that flowering plants may have existed more than 100 million years longer than previously thought. This increased span of time might help explain how flowering plants spread, diversified and prevailed on land.

The ancestors of flowering plants currently remain a mystery, and scientists aren't sure what kind of events or conditions might have spurred their origin.

"So far, no direct ancestors of flowering plants are known," Hochuli said. "Some groups of plants are suspected to be closely related. But the evidence is weak, and most of these groups are thought to be too specialized to be at the base of the flowering plants."

Hochuli and his colleague Susanne Feist-Burkhardt detailed their findings Oct. 1 in the journal Frontiers in Plant Science.

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The shape of a flower's petals and leaves are dictated by a biological map hidden inside the flower's growing bud, a new study finds.

Researchers at the John Innes Center and the University of East Anglia, both located in Norwich in the United Kingdom, studied how petals and leaves grow in a type of small flowering plant called Arabidopsis. They discovered that concealed maps within the flower buds are made up of patterns of arrows that act as instructions for how each cell in the bud should grow. As such, the maps essentially influence a flower bud's cell polarity, or the functions of the cells.

The study's findings not only shed light on why geranium petals are unlike rose petals, they also explain why an individual flower's petals and leaves are different shapes.

"The discovery of these hidden polarity maps was a real surprise and provides a simple explanation for how different shapes can be generated," Enrico Coen, a plant biologist at the John Innes Center, said in a statement.

The arrows on the biological maps control so-called PIN proteins, which are molecules located toward the ends of each cell that are essential for the formation of leaves, the researchers explained.

After observing how Arabidopsispetals and leaves grew, Coen and his colleagues used computer simulations to manipulate the PIN molecules and test their ideas of how these maps influence the plant's growth. In their simulations, the scientists made the PIN molecules glow under a microscope, making them easier to see and track.

In a leaf, the pattern of arrows is directed toward the tip of the bud, giving the leaf a more pointed shape. With petals, the arrows appear more fanned out, which explains how flower petals tend to have more rounded ends than leaves, the researchers said.

The study also showed that a gene called Jagged controls the growth of petals. This gene is located in a region of the biological map that interacts with the pattern of arrows, the researchers said.

Part of the reason why petals and leaves are different shapes lies in evolution, because the leaves and petals fulfill different functions, according to the study scientists. Leaves are primarily involved in photosynthesis, capturing light and acquiring sugars to feed the plant. Petals, however, develop later in a plant's life cycle, and are used to attract pollinators, such as bees and butterflies.

The results of the study were published this week in the journal PLOS Biology.

Follow Denise Chow on Twitter @denisechow. Follow LiveScience @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

Everyone knows that bees buzz around flowers in their quest for nectar. But scientists have now learned that flowers are buzzing right back — with electricity.

Plants generally have a negative electrical charge and emit a weak electrical signal, according to researchers at the University of Bristol in England. And scientists have known for years that bees' flapping wings create a positive electrical charge of up to 200 volts as they flit from flower to flower, according to a news release.

But can the bees detect flowers' electrical charge? While animals like sharks are known to sense electrical fields, nobody had ever found that an insect could do the same, ScientificAmerican reports.

To test the bees' sensitivity, researchers filled a room with artificial flowers: Half of the flowers were electrically charged and carried a sugary reward, while the other half had no charge and a bitter solution of quinine.

The bees quickly learned to visit only the electrically charged flowers, and to not waste their energy visiting flowers with no electrical charge. But when the electrical charges were switched off, the bees once again visited flowers randomly, suggesting that they had been reacting to the electrical charges. [The 10 Weirdest Animal Discoveries]

"Animals are just constantly surprising us as to how good their senses are," Dominic Clarke, lead author of the study, published in journal Science, told the BBC. "More and more we're starting to see that nature's senses are almost as good as they could possibly be."

Bees and flowers, of course, co-evolved with a long-standing symbiotic relationship: The bees depend on flowers for nectar, which they use to produce honey, and flowers need bees to help pollinate other flowers.

Flowers use various means to attract bees and other pollinators. In addition to their electrical charge and alluring fragrance, flowers display bright colors — and research has found that bees see colors three times faster than humans.

But bees — busy as they famously are — don't have time to waste visiting pretty flowers whose nectar has just been taken by another insect. "The last thing a flower wants is to attract a bee and then fail to provide nectar," said Daniel Robert, co-author of the study, in a statement. "Bees are good learners and would soon lose interest in such [an] unrewarding flower."

So flowers, the researchers confirmed, emit a different electrical signal after their nectar has been harvested. They found that petunias became slightly more positively charged after a bee visited them, according to ScientificAmerican.

That revised electrical charge acts as a kind of "No Vacancy" sign to other bees, which learn to trust the signals that the flowers emit.

"This is a magnificent interaction where you have an animal and a plant, and they both want this to go as well as possible," study co-author Gregory Sutton told NPR. "The flowers are trying to make themselves look as different as possible. This is to establish the flower's brand."

How do bees sense an electrical charge? Researchers aren't sure, but they suspect the fuzzy hairs on bees' bodies "bristle up" under an electrostatic force, just like human hair in front of a television screen.

Other scientists are excited about the possible implications this research may have for other nectar-gathering insects such as hoverflies and moths.

"We had no idea that this sense even existed," Thomas Seeley, a behavioral biologist at Cornell University, told ScientificAmerican. "Assuming we can replicate the findings, this is going to open up a whole new window on insect sensory systems."

Contact Marc Lallanilla at mlallanilla@techmedianetwork.com. Follow him on Twitter @MarcLallanilla. Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience. We're also on Facebook & Google+.

Several tales have taken root as the cultural heart of Valentine's Day, most of which stem from the patron Saint Valentine.

One legend describes a priest named Valentine who lived during the third century in Rome. The Roman Emperor Claudius II was building up a military at the time and supposedly thought single men would make better soldiers. To build a stronger army, the emperor outlawed marriage for young men. Feeling this sweetheart ban was unjust, Valentine apparently performed secret marriage ceremonies . When found out, legend has it the love priest was put to death.

A slight twist to the tragic love story has the priest or bishop being publicly beheaded for refusing to denounce the name of Christ. His feast day was set as Feb. 14 by the Church to honor his heroic life.

Valentine's name was not associated with romantic and courtly love until the 14th century, when Geoffrey Chaucer incorporated St. Valentine’s Day into his love poem "The Parliament of Fowls," according to Philip Florio, assistant to the vice president of student life at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia.

The ensuing Valentine's Day has been linked with heroism and romantic love for centuries. Flowers , candies and syrupy-sweet cards help men and women profess their love for one another.

In 1868, Richard Cadbury released the first Valentine's Day box of chocolates , followed in 1902 with the first "conversation" hearts from the New England Confectionery Company. In the 1840s, Esther A. Howland created the first commercial Valentine's Day cards in the United States. In 1913, the Hallmark Company produced its first Valentine card.

Can't buy love? Tell that to the retail industry and hearty buyers. In 2011, the average consumer will spend $116.21, with total Valentine's Day spending expected to reach $15.7 billion, according to the National Retail Federation.

Our pets will surely feel the love this V-day, with the average person spending $5.04 on their furry friends, according to the NRF.

Greeting cards still remain a popular gift choice, accounting for nearly 55 percent of Valentine's Day gifts, followed by candy and flowers.

For a cosmopolitan Valentine's, here's how to say "I love you" in other languages.

• Italian: Ti amo
• French: Je t'aime
• Spanish: Te amo
• Farsi: Dooset daram
• Swahili: Naku penda wewe
• Thai: Phom rak khun
• Mandarin: Wo ai ni

Another sweet way to profess your love, albeit briefly, is through a pastel conversation heart. The New England Confectionery Company produces them from late February through mid-January of the following year. That entire production sells out in just six weeks, equalling about 100,000 pounds (45,360 kg) a day. In the early 1990's, the company decided to update the sayings every year, retiring some dated terms in the process. The first updated –and now retired– phrase was "Fax Me," and current phrases include "Text Me," "Friend Me," "Tweet Me" and "You Rock."

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Minus bad pickup lines, one-night stands, and other social complexities, plants actually do have sex. When people pluck the sweet-smelling blooms of a plant, they’re actually dismembering the reproductive organs of plants! The “male” portion of the flower is the pollen-loaded stamen, while the egg-holding pistil is the “female” part. Most plants sprout bisexual flowers (which have both male and female parts), but plants like squash grow separate male and female flowers — still others have both bisexual and single-sex flowers. And, as evolutionary biologists have recently discovered, plants with male and bisexual flowers produce more seeds. Why this is true is a new scientific mystery, but it probably has something to do with male flowers hoarding less of a plant’s energy (making more of it available to crank out seeds). So how do flowering plants do it? Using nature as a matchmaker, wind, animals, or water carry pollen to a sticky female stigma. The grains then germinate and grow downward, creeping slowly towards the ovaries. Eventually, the pollen grains bump into some eggs: Ta-da, seeds are born (yes, eating an apple or other fruit means eating an unborn life form!). But flowers aren’t the only way plants know how to get it on . Ginkgo trees have separate male and female plants altogether. Male trees produce spores which hatch into sperm, swimming to an egg inside a female ovule. Still other plants — such as duckweed — abstain from sex altogether. These curious plants produce leaf-like clones that break off and grow into adult plants.

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So-called bowerbirds are known to build elaborate branch-and-vine structures to attract their mates. Now, new research shows that this family of birds may also be accidental gardeners.

Male bowerbirds decorate their nest structures, or bowers, with brightly colored objects, including fruit from the potato bush plant. After the fruit shrivels, the birds toss it aside. The result is a lush garden around the bower. The birds even engage in accidental genetic engineering, picking the greenest fruits of the potato bush plant as décor. As a consequence, the potato bush fruits around bowers are greener than potato bush fruits growing elsewhere.

Inadvertent or not, these bower gardens establish the bowerbirds as the only species known to "cultivate" plants for uses other than food, said study researcher Joah Madden of the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom.

"Until now, humans have been the only species known to cultivate plants for uses other than food," Madden said in a statement. "We grow plants for all kinds of things — from drugs, to clothing, to props that we use in our sexual displays such as roses — but it seems we are not unique in this respect."

Bowerbirds are talented architects in general. Earlier work has shown that the birds construct their bowers so that they look bigger than they really are when sitting in them.  They clear litter and leaves from around their bowers, protecting them from fire — and, it turns out, creating the perfect space for a "garden."

Madden and his colleagues studied bowerbirds in Taunton National Park in central Queensland, Australia. They observed that there were more potato bushes (Solanum ellipticum) around bowers than in surrounding areas. These purple-flowered, green-fruited plants are also known as "bush tomatoes."

The researchers established that the birds weren't choosing locations based on high concentrations of potato bushes; rather, the bowers predated the extra bushes. The researchers reported their work in the April 24 issue of the journal Current Biology.

"We do not believe bowerbirds are intentionally growing these plants, but this accumulation of preferred objects close to a site of habitation is arguably the way any cultivation begins," Madden said. "It will be very interesting to see how this mutually-beneficial relationship between bowerbirds and these plants develops."

You can follow LiveScience senior writer Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.

• How Do I Love Thee? Experts Count 8 Ways
• Men Will Spend Twice as Much as Women this Valentine's Day
• The 6 Most Tragic Love Stories in History

WASHINGTON — Suit pressed, mind ready and resume in hand. When preparing for a job interview, most people take every precaution to convey the best impression possible. But aside from body odor, not many people pay attention to the odors that surround them.

That onion-laden lunch could give your potential boss-to-be the wrong impression, according to new research presented in May at the Association for Psychological Science annual meeting.

"There's a lot of research that's begun now, where people are looking at how the environment affects our well-being," said Jeannette Haviland-Jones, of Rutgers University in New Jersey. "We tend to think of ourselves as separate from the environment, but we're not. We create our environment."

Hers and others' research is showing that smell can influence our thoughts and behaviors more expected.

Scented silhouette

Many things in the environment, including verbal and physical cues, can influence how we perceive others. New research presented by Nicole Hovis and Theresa White of Le Moyne College in Syracuse, N.Y., shows that certain smells can influence a first impression.

They asked 65 volunteer undergraduates (who were mostly female) to sniff a vial holding either a lemon or onion scent, or no scent, while standing near a gender-neutral silhouette. They were asked to form an impression of the personality of the silhouette and later filled out a form rating several personality traits.

Participants smelling onion perceived the silhouette as having increased manliness, while lemon scents were linked with participants thinking of the silhouette as more feminine, clean and pleasant.

"Let's say you go for a job interview and you are going to have lunch before you go, what do you want your breath smelling like, or even your hands?" White told LiveScience. "This is more subtle than [when] people put on intentional perfumes."

Flower power

Another set of experiments, conducted by Haviland-Jones, determined how a non-detectable level of flower scent influenced people's behaviors.

The researchers perfumed a room with a floral smell, classic fragrances like Chanel No. 5 or Johnson & Johnson baby powder or non-scented air.They then asked 59 college students to write about three life events, one distant, one recent and one possible future event. The essays were coded for the positive and negative words used.

In the second part of the test, the participants entered another room containing a mime and were asked to direct him to act out an emotion from their childhood memory.

Participants in the florally scented room used about three times as many happiness-related words in their writings and were more likely to approach and touch the mime while instructing him. Just 15 percent of the participants in the fresh air room moved toward or touched the mime, while most of the floral participants (74 percent) did so. 

Floral evolution

"It [the floral smell] actually is a mood manipulator," said study researcher Patricia Wilson of La Salle University in Philadelphia. "So your mood is better, and given that your mood is better, you are looking for things in your memory bank that match that mood."

The researchers believe this effect may have something to do with the co-evolution of plants and people, though this is just speculation; the happy mood cultivated by flower scents may increase our desires to propagate them in large numbers.

"The floral odors can make you happy, floral odors promote social interaction, social approach kinds of behaviors," Haviland-Jones told LiveScience.

You can follow LiveScience staff writer Jennifer Welsh on Twitter @microbelover. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.

Annual plants live for one growing season and then die, while perennials regrow every spring. The difference is genetic, and yet, a clever "plant gene therapy" technique can be used to change an annual into a perennial.

In 2008, scientists with the Flanders Institute for Biotechnology in Gent, Belgium, determined what makes plants either annual or perennial. The difference, according to plant geneticist Siegbert Melzer and his team, comes down to two critical flower-inducing genes that, when turned off, can make an annual plant regrow every year.

The rapid growth of flowers, and then seeds, is the strategy most annuals use to propagate from one generation to the next and one growing season to the next. Annuals experience "rapid growth following germination and rapid transition to flower and seed formation, thus preventing the loss of energy needed to create permanent structures," the researchers explained in a press release.

"They germinate quickly after the winter so that they come out before other plants, thus eliminating the need to compete for food and light," according to the statement. "The trick is basically to make as many seeds as possible in as short a time as possible."

Perennials instead build "structures" such as overwintering buds, bulbs or tubers, that contain cells that are not yet specialized and, when the next growing season begins, can be converted into stalks and leaves .

An annual uses up all of its non-specialized cells making flowers, and thus, after dropping seeds, it dies. The growth of the flowers is triggered by the plant sensing the length of day and amount of sunlight. When the light is just right, "blooming-induction genes" are triggered.

By deactivating two of the genes that induce flower growth in the thale cress, a flowering plant whose genome has been entirely sequenced, the researchers created mutant plants that "can no longer induce flowering, but ... can continue to grow vegetatively or come into flower much later." Because the plants don't use up the store of non-specialized cells making flowers, they become perennials, able to continue to grow for a long time.

And, like true perennials, the altered annuals show secondary growth with wood formation.

• Do Plants Have Sex?
• What Does Poison Ivy Look Like?
• How Do Flowers Know When to Bloom?

Follow Life's Little Mysteries on Twitter @LLMysteries

Catching Flies With Roadkill

Timotheüs van der Niet catches flies from roadkill to see which might be carrying orchid pollen.

Smelly Orchid

This orchid (Satyrium pumilum), native to South Africa, attracts carrion-loving flesh flies to pollinate it.

Fly Pollinating Orchid

The orchid has a special smell of roadkill that selectively attracts flesh flies.

Pollen PomPoms on Flesh Fly

The orchid lures the flies into its carrion-scented boosom so the fly can pick up pollen and deposit it on other flowers.

Blooming Corpse Flower

A corpse flower in bloom in 2003 at the United States Botanic Garden. This was the second time the then 10-year-old plant had bloomed; the first was in 2001.

World's Largest Flower Finally Finds Home

A woman leans over a rafflesia flower, which can reach three feet in diameter and releases a rotting-flesh odor to attract pollinators.

Skunk Cabbage

The skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) is a member of the arum family, which also includes jack-in-the-pulpit. Pollinators, such as carrion beetles and flesh flies are lured in by the plant's intense heat (which the skunk cabbage generates on its own) and color, which resembles rotting flesh. Its skunky smell also entices these pollinators.

Corpse Flower

A rotten-flesh-smelling "corpse flower" named Metis, which bloomed on Sept. 14, 2010 at Binghamton University in upstate New York. Its corpse smell attracts its pollinators — carrion beetles and flesh flies.

Dead horse arum

This plant, called the "dead horse arum" produces the stench of rotting meat, attracting carrion-seeking blowflies which act as pollinators.

Stop and smell the roses, but steer clear of South African orchids. These flowers use the smell of rotting flesh to attract their main pollinator, the flesh fly.

"We know it's common for orchids to deceive insects into pollinating them. We also know that some plant species can mimic carrion to attract flies. What we didn't know was how successful this was," Timotheüs van der Niet, of the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, said in a statement. "Mimicry is often a very poor way to pollinate a plant."

The orchid Satyrium pumilum is found in South Africa, where it uses the relatively weak smell of rotting flesh to entice flesh flies. The flies are attracted to roadkill, which serves as food for their larvae.

"The flowers of the orchids are incredibly specialized. Not only do they have to entice flies in, but they have to get flies of the right size into the right position to pick up the pollen," van der Niet said.  

Researchers had wondered how the flower attracted pollinators, because it doesn't use nectar as some other plants do. The flower actually has to be quite deceptive; most pollinators, like bees, reap sweet nectar food for their services to flowers, but the fly gets nothing in return for its visit to the orchid. The flies get covered in the orchid's pollen when they visit, and they deliver that pollen (grains of which ultimately become sperm cells) to the female reproductive part of another S. pumilum orchid.

"We've found that scent plays a hugely important role in pulling in the flies, and even inside the flower different scents attract the flies into the right location to pick up the pollen," van der Niet said.  

The researchers found scores of these flies, covered with the flower's pollen, on the roadkill they found. The road corpses also attracted other flies, but they didn't show signs of having visited the orchid.

"The combination of smell and sight is irresistible to some flies. The level of carrion mimicry is amazing; we even saw a female fly leave larva in a flower because it thought it was carrion," van der Niet said. "It also disproves a cliché: You don't always catch more flies with honey."

The study was published in the March 14 issue of the journal Annals of Biology.

You can follow LiveScience staff writer Jennifer Welsh on Twitter @microbelover.

This ScienceLives article was provided to LiveScience in partnership with the National Science Foundation.

Teh-hui Kao is a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, and chair of the Intercollege Graduate Degree Program in Plant Biology, Penn State University. His research focuses on the self/non-self recognition mechanism adopted by Petuniaand many other flowering plants to prevent inbreeding and promote outcrossing. The pistil, the female reproductive organ, can distinguish between self and non-self pollen, and only allows non-self pollen to affect fertilization. Kao's lab identified the pistil gene that is involved in self/non-self recognition in 1994 (published in Nature); identified the first of the multiple pollen genes that are involved in self/non-self recognition in 2004 (published in Nature); and identified additional pollen genes through collaboration with Professor Seiji Takayama's lab in Japan in 2010 (published in Science). To learn more about Kao's research, view this video.

Name: Teh-hui Kao Age: 59 Institution: Penn State University Field of Study: Plant Biology

What inspired you to choose this field of study? My undergraduate major was chemistry with a concentration in biochemistry, and my Ph.D. research was in biophysical chemistry conducted in a chemistry department, so I have never received any formal training in plant biology. During my postdoctoral research, I had an opportunity to collaborate with two plant biologists who were studying self-incompatibility in the Brassicaceae (cabbage) family. As I dug into the literature to learn more about self-incompatibility, I became fascinated by a wide variety of strategies flowering plants have adopted to prevent inbreeding. At that time (early 1980s), nothing was known about the genes that control self/non-self recognition between pollen and pistil for any type of self-incompatibility. My strong interest in understanding the mechanism by which pistils of flowering plants can select the "correct" type of pollen for fertilization led me to decide to pursue this line of research in my independent position. For more than two decades, my lab has been studying the type of self-incompatibility that has been found in the Solanaceae and two other families. The deeper we dig, the more questions we uncover and the more we respect flowering plants for evolving into such a complex system for the sole purpose of preventing inbreeding.

What is the best piece of advice you ever received? Always keep your eyes open for unexpected results. It is human nature to discount unexpected results, especially if one thinks that the hypothesis being tested is "beautifully" formulated and should yield certain results. However, unexpected results could mean that the problem we are trying to solve is more complex than we think. In this case, unexpected results can provide a great opportunity for new discoveries if we carefully consider alternative hypotheses that can explain the unexpected results and if we design new experiments to test them.

What was your first scientific experiment as a child? I wish I could say that I was born a researcher. I received all my education though college in Taiwan at a time when students had to take entrance exams to go from primary school to middle school, from middle school to high school, and from high school to college. At every level, the competition was very fierce and the ability to get into one of the few "star" schools might very well determine the success of a student who was trying to get into a "star" school at the next level. So, studying for entrance exams in school and at after-school cram schools was a high priority. I wasn't exposed to any experiments until I got to high school. All I can remember is that I did not like the biology experiments where we had to dissect frogs. This was one of the reasons why I chose chemistry, rather than biology, as my major in college, and it shouldn't be a surprise that I have been working with plants in my entire independent research career, to date.

What is your favorite thing about being a researcher? Being a researcher keeps my brain working all the time, even in dreams! I think about the experiments that we have just performed—for example, how the results should be interpreted and why some of the experiments didn't work—and I plan for the next big experiments. I try to keep up with the [research] literature and I have to exchange results with other researchers in the field to make sure that we are aware of the developments elsewhere and are not working in a vacuum. In short, I enjoy the never-ending challenges to my brainpower.

What is the most important characteristic a researcher must demonstrate in order to be an effective researcher? I can think of many important characteristics that I believe an effective researcher must possess, but to name just one, I would say, having passion about the research he/she is doing is very important. Research is rarely a smooth path, and it requires great passion and dedication to be able to endure temporary setbacks and sustain interest in pursuing the answer to the question one is studying. I often tell my students that I consider my work a hobby, and not just a job, as it gives me so much joy, satisfaction and mental rewards.

What are the societal benefits of your research? The self-incompatibility system my lab is studying can potentially be used for hybrid seed production, an important agricultural practice. Crop plants grown from hybrid seeds have greater vigor and produce higher yield than plants grown from seeds obtained from self-pollination. However, almost all crop species (e.g., corn, soybean and wheat) are self-compatible, because plant breeders selected out self-incompatibility in order to produce inbred lines homozygous for desired traits. Thus, to produce hybrid seed of commercial cultivars, it is necessary to manually or mechanically remove anthers from the plant serving as the female parent to prevent self-fertilization. This is a labor-intensive, costly and inefficient process.Understanding the mechanism of self-incompatibility will likely help design strategies for restoring self-incompatibility back to crop species. If this can be accomplished, it will greatly facilitate hybrid seed production and have tremendous agronomic benefits.

Who has had the most influence on your thinking as a researcher? While I was an undergraduate student at the National Taiwan University, T.B. Lo allowed me to experience for the first time what research was all about, and inspired me to pursue a research career. In graduate school at Yale, my thesis advisor, Donald Crothers, set a high standard for research and created an intellectually stimulating environment for the students. There were daily impromptu discussions among the graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. Crothers often dropped in to hear the discussion, and when he did, he always had the last word. This experience taught me the value of sharing thoughts with other researchers and the benefits of collegiality among co-workers. My postdoctoral mentor, Ray Wu of Cornell University, gave me complete freedom to pursue my own side-projects that laid the foundation for my independent research. I also learned from him that a researcher has the awesome responsibility of mentoring young scientists, as well as ways to successfully foster students' crucial transition from lab member to lab principal.

What about your field or being a researcher do you think would surprise people the most? As I have spent my entire research career, so far, in academic environments, I would like to address this question from my experience as an academic researcher. I think it would surprise people the most to know that the life of a researcher is not at all boring or dull. For me, the constant pressure to keep up with the rapid pace of scientific advancements in my field and in other related fields makes my daily life exciting. The joy of having been able to contribute to the understanding of the mystery behind the complicated biological system I am studying makes my life fulfilling. The opportunity to train undergraduate and graduate students in research, and to inspire them to pursue a research career makes my job rewarding.

If you could only rescue one thing from your burning office or lab, what would it be? I hope I never have to face such a decision, as it would be terrible to lose any of the hundreds of items in my office and lab. But, should I have to face such a decision, it would not be the laptop (as I have backups for every file) and instead, I would grab the lecture notes (in about a dozen manila folders) for the honors biochemistry course I teach (assuming that my students would grab their own lab notebooks or some other irreplaceable items). I have taught this course for more than two decades, and have almost perfected the notes for each lecture. These are impossible to replace.

What music do you play most often in your lab or car? My father gave me the very first LP that I ever owned (violin concertos by Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky) when I was in Taiwan in the fourth grade. The record is long gone, but classical music has become an integral part of my life. I listen to it in my office and at home, and if I had to drive to work, I would certainly listen to it in the car (but I only live a 10 minute walk away from my office!). I left behind a classical music collection of over 700 LPs when I came to the United States to study more than three decades ago. Over the years, I have somewhat caught up with the technological development in the music industry, from LPs and real-to-reel tapes, to cassettes and eight-tracks, and to CDs. But I still don't own an iPod (nor do I have a cell phone). Nowadays, I most frequently listen to classical music over Internet radio stations, as I like the randomness of the music I hear, and I occasionally play CDs on my Bose Wave Radio. It is such a joy and luxury to be able to immerse myself in classical music while at work.

Editor's Note: This research was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the federal agency charged with funding basic research and education across all fields of science and engineering. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. See the ScienceLives archive.

Two new species of dandelion have been discovered in Spain.

The two recently discovered species (Taraxacum decastroi and Taraxacum lacianense) were found by Spanish researchers in the Pyrenees and the Cordillera Cantábrica mountain range, respectively.

The find was surprising because it was thought that most of the plant species in the Iberian Peninsula had been identified.

"It's hard to find new species now in Spain. It depends on the complexity of the group of plants you study," said Antonio Galán de Mera, lead author of the study and a researcher in the Department of Biology (Botany) at the San Pablo-CEU University in Madrid.

According to the study, which has been published in the journal Annales Botanici Fennici, identifying the plants was no easy task.

"We had to compare them with numerous examples from Europe (above all in Spain and Portugal), which were lent to us from the collections of other colleagues," Galán de Mera said in a statement.

T. decastroi and T. lacianense are plants with long leaves and little pollen, because they reproduce by means of seeds without fertilization. There are 50 species in the Taraxacum genus found in the Iberian Peninsula.

T. decastroi, which takes its name from the naturalist Emilio de Castro y Pérez de Castro, is a plant from the Pyrenees fir forests of Lérida, while T. lacianense, first spotted by José Alfredo Vicente Orellana, grows in the birch woods of the Montes de León mountains, specifically in the area of Laciana. Both plants live in moist environments and face threats .

"Taraxacum lacianense lives in environments that are very vulnerable to becoming dried out. In addition, the bogland in which it grows is in the birch woods of the Montes de León, which are seriously threatened by open cast coal mining," Galán de Mera said.

In Spain, "it is impossible to pinpoint" the number of new plant species that still remain to be discovered, he added.

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• Hold Your Nose: 7 Foul Flowers

As Valentine's Day approaches every year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents get a lot of flowers.

Unfortunately, the bouquets intended to impress someone's sweetheart sometimes carry more than pretty petals. So-called invasive species and plant diseases from other parts of the world often come along too.

The customs agents must identify these undesirables and keep them from entering the country. If allowed to pass, they could wreck farms and ecosystems, and cost millions of dollars to eliminate. And as long the flowers keep coming, these critters will keep doing what they've evolved to do , said biologist Matthew Chew, of Arizona State University in Tempe.

"There is no point in blaming the beetles. The problem lies in how we handle, package, store and ship things, not in the biota," Chew told OurAmazingPlanet.

That's why customs agents are extra vigilant. During the 2010 Valentine's season (which lasts from Jan. 1 through Feb. 14) customs agents saw 320.8 million cut flower stems, up from 148.5 million stems processed during the 2009 season, according to customs records.

Shipments from South America are under the closest watch, since most of the cut flower stems imported into the United States come from Colombia (211.9 million stems) and Ecuador (70.5 million stems). Mexico, the Netherlands, Costa Rica and Thailand are the other top shippers to the United States.

The closest port of entry to South America Miami is the preferred import destination for shipments of cut flower imports. Miami processed about 272 million stems, or 85 percent of the nations imported cut flowers last year.

Chances are, you should expect your Valentine to give you roses, a mixed bouquet or dianthus. Those were the top imported flowers in 2010. Pom-pom chrysanthemums, miniature dianthus, rose bouquets, alstroemerias, chrysanthemums, hydrangeas and gerberas round out the top 10 imported cut flowers.

By inspecting these flower imports, thousands of unwanted critters are intercepted. Thrips are one common pest spotted on flower imports. These small winged insects feed on flowers and vegetables and are known to carry more than 20 plant-infecting viruses. Aphids are another insect that is not allowed to enter the country. They are best known for playing a role in the Irish potato famine of the 1840s. Moths and miner flies are also commonly intercepted.

There's no way to tell how many pests were missed, and there's always some risk of accidental introduction as long as the flower trade stays strong.

So it's up to the customs agents to prevent anything unwanted from entering the country. After all, you can't fault these creatures for doing what they do best .

"The species we call invasive are actually just the ones that our regular activities have most often transported to environments where they can thrive by being absolutely normal, not by becoming monsters," Chew said.

• Destructive Invading Beetle Caught at LAX
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• Invasive Species Thrive on Antarctic Islands

Reach OurAmazingPlanet staff writer Brett Israel at bisrael@techmedianetwork.com. Follow him on Twitter @btisrael.

Above Titan

How's this for an evolutionary strategy? Develop such a rancid odor that you lure flies and beetles critters that would normally feed on decaying flesh and hold them hostage until they're smothered with your seeds so that when you release them, they can't help but to spread your genes.

Here are 7 fetid flowers that have followed that path. From the various corpse flowers to the western skunk cabbage, these amazing, stomach-turning flowers will have you begging for fresh air.

Titan Arum (Amorphophallus titanum)

When it comes to creating a big stink, the titan arum does it in style. Not only is it one of the biggest flowers in the world, it's also one of the smelliest. Dubbed the "corpse flower" after the putrid smell of its bloom, these flowers are huge draws at greenhouses around the world. Though their blooms are rare, the smell of rotten flesh lingers in the air for days.

The titan arum bloom is actually not a single flower, but thousands of tiny flowers, which botanists call an inflorescence. The titan arum's inflorescence is the largest in the world, typically stretching past 10 feet (3 meters) tall.

Native to the equatorial rainforests of central Sumatra in western Indonesia, the titan arum's scientific name, Amorphophallus titanum, translates to "giant misshapen phallus." The plant evolved its horrendous odor and darkly colored collar-like structure, called a spathe, to attract pollinators such as carrion beetles and flesh flies, which normally feed on rotting flesh. [See the stages of the corpse flower's bloom.]

Several titan arums have recently bloomed, including Titan 3, Metis and an unmanned plant at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, England.

Stinking Corpse Lily (Rafflesia arnoldii)

Another carrion flower that is often referred to as a "corpse flower" is Rafflesia arnoldii, native to the rainforests of Sumatra and Borneo in Indonesia. These plants look and smell like a rotting carcass. These stinkers are big too: Rafflesia flowers are the largest individual flowers on Earth.

The flower, with several petal-like structures around a large opening, can weigh up to 24 pounds (11 kilograms) and grow as large as a person's torso.

Rafflesia is a parasitic flower. It has no leaves, stems, roots or chlorophyll (the chemical that helps plants photosynthesize). Any water or nutrition is siphoned from its host, the Tetrastigma vine. This makes Rafflesia very tricky to find in the wild because it grows as thread-like fibers within this vine. When it's ready to reproduce it will form a cabbage-like lump that bursts through to the outside. About a year later, the lump will open but only for a few days. Rafflesia will then grow round fruit, filled with thousands of seeds that are spread by forest animals.

Western Skunk Cabbage (Lysichiton americanus)

This flower might not look so bad, but it's called a skunk cabbage for a reason. Native to the swamps of the Pacific Northwest, the plant releases a rotten odor that flies and beetles can't resist.

The Western Skunk Cabbage is tiny in comparison to the corpse flowers. But much like the titan arum, the Western Skunk Cabbage produces a relatively large spadix and surrounding spathe, but they are only a few dozen inches tall. The flower has is rare feature its blooming stem will get hot. This heat will melt the snow around the plant to give pollinators easy access.

Another fun tidbit: Bears will eat the skunk cabbage after hibernating because it's a laxative.

Carrion Flower (Stapelia gigantea)

No matter the nickname carrion flower, toad flower, Zulu giant, starfish flower these native South African plants are like road kill to flies.

The plant itself resembles a cactus, with clumps of 4-sided spineless stems. In September, the flower blooms (see above), producing large, flesh-looking, 5-pointed stars. The flowers have the characteristic rotten smell of carrion plants, but if you find one outside it's not likely to make you gag.

The flesh-colored flower is covered with little white hairs, and attracts flies and maggots to the male and female sex organs inside its central orifice.

Stinking Root Parasite (Hydnora africana)

The parasitic plant Hydnora africana, native to the arid deserts in southern Africa, grows entirely underground.

These parasites live off the roots of the shrubby Euphorbia genus of plants. The red, flesh-colored flowers sprout from the sand, jam-packed with black beetles due to the flower's dung scent. The beetles are trapped inside the flower by downward pointing hairs, but they spill out when the flower opens.

Dead Horse Arum Lily (Helicodiceros muscivorus)

This rare, heat-producing plant can raise its temperature to help lure flies into its flower. Of course, the dead horse smell and dark-colored spathe also help.

On a warm and sunny day, the flower will unroll and release its stench while only the female flowers are receptive. Flies are lured deep within the hairy spadix, where they get trapped for an entire day. The next day, the male flowers shed their pollen. The pollen-coated flies then leave the plant, ignoring the inactive female flowers on the way out, and go on to cross pollinate another Dead horse arum lily.

Eastern Skunk Cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus)

Like the similarly named plant on the West Coast, the Eastern Skunk Cabbage is a stinky plant at home in swampy wetlands. The plant may be foul, but in Tennessee it's protected due to its status as an endangered species.

In the spring, Eastern Skunk Cabbage will flower and grow a 4-inch- long(10-centimeter) spadix and 6-inch- tall (15-cm) deep purple spathe. The plant will grow several green leaves above ground after the flower. Crushing the leaves will release the skunky odor.

A "corpse flower" nicknamed for the rotten meat smell it releases as it blooms revealed its fetid flower last week (Oct. 26) at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew in England.

"Jaw dropping site," said Rosemary Walbancke, on Kew's Facebook fan page. "But boy does it smell bad."

The flower is a rare example of the Indonesian Titan Arum (Amorphophallus titanum) plant. Native to the equatorial rainforests of central Sumatra in western Indonesia, it evolved its horrendous odor to attract pollinating carrion beetles and flesh flies, which normally feed on rotting flesh. A corpse flower's bloom is rare and unpredictable, and typically only lasts a day. [See the stages of a corpse flower's bloom .]

The corpse flower bloom is actually not a single flower, but thousands of tiny flowers, which botanists call an inflorescence. Titan Arum's inflorescence is the largest in the world.

Titan Arums, when fully open, can stand over 6.5 feet (2 meters) tall and spread 3.5 feet (1 m) across. This year has seen several corpse flowers bloom, including one named Metis at Binghamton University in upstate New York and one dubbed Titan 3 at Western Illinois University.

Kew Gardens has a large number of these plants, and as such, flowerings have become a remarkably common occurrence there have been more than three times as many titan arums flower at Kew in the last six years than in the previous 120 years, according to the Garden's website .

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A titan arum bloomed at Kew Gardens earlier this year (video above) and more pictures of the current flower's bloom can be found on Kew Garden's flickr page.

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