Some plants bend the rules of plant life so far that they barely resemble plants at all. Balanophora is one of them - a ...

Balanophora plants represent an extreme example of this shift. They do not produce their own food through photosynthesis but ...

The study reveals how Balanophora plants function despite abandoning photosynthesis and, in some species, sexual reproduction. Their plastid genomes shrank dramatically in a shared ancestor, yet the ...

A weird-looking parasitic plant has discarded all its photosynthesis machinery – and nevertheless has found a way to thrive.

In the damp understory of forests in Taiwan, mainland Japan, and Okinawa, a plant called Balanophora can fool you at first ...

Balanophora is a plant that abandoned photosynthesis long ago and now lives entirely as a parasite on tree roots, hidden in dark forest undergrowth. Scientists surveying rare populations across East ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Humans can do lots of things that plants can’t do. We can walk around, we can talk, we can hear and see and touch. But plants have one major advantage over humans: They can make ...

Photosynthesis occurs in chloroplasts found within cells. It is the chloroplasts that contain the green pigment chlorophyll which absorbs light. The plant uses this glucose to grow as well as make ...

Cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, on the surface of a lake. Bacteria were the first organisms to photosynthesize, creating the oxygen essential for the evolution of life on Earth. Philipp Schulze / ...

Humans owe a lot to photosynthesis, the process by which green plants turn water and carbon dioxide into the food we eat and the air we breathe. But this 3.5-billion-year-old biochemical process is ...