Why Do Flowers Smell? A couple of the most common questions that people have about flowers are: (1) Why do flowers have scents? and (2) Why do many flowers smell good to us? The first question is fairly easy to answer, but the second one is a bit trickier to…
Signature Scents of Death & Decay In a previous post, we explored the discovery that plants emit a wide array of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and that, because of this, sometimes plants stink. But I think few would argue that the prize for the “stinkiest” plants would have to go…
Plants “Stink” One of the really cool things about plants, which I think most people don’t realize, is that they emit many kinds of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Some of these VOCs we can smell, such as flower fragrances and pine scents. But many, such as the plant hormone ethylene,…
It’s strawberry season here at the upper left-hand corner of the USA. This, and a recent report regarding the biosynthesis of the chemical that is chiefly responsible for the strawberry flavor (see Ref. 1 below), got me thinking about why they taste so good. Strawberries emit several hundred volatile organic…
Why decaf coffee? Have you ever had a cup of really good decaf coffee? Me neither. (Probably because the decaf coffee results from chemical processing of normal coffee beans.) But why would anyone want coffee without caffeine? As illustrated by the old Gary Larson cartoon on the left, sometimes you…
How a parasitic plant may “sniff out” its victims. As on the internet, once information is broadcast, even if only among ‘friends’, it becomes available for other unintended and unexpected uses. Dodder (genus Cuscuta) is a parasitic plant on other plants. But how does this plant find its host? Apparently,…
Just Keep Talking The idea of chemical communication among plants has recently gone from being viewed as a fringe idea to an accepted biological phenomenon. We now know that plants use several different volatile organic compounds not only to send signals from one part of the plant to another part,…
Toxic? Yes!….. But wicked? Wicked (wik’id) adj. [Middle English wikke, evil, akin to Old English wicce, witch] “1. morally bad or wrong; acting or done with evil intent; depraved; iniquitous.” – Webster’s New World Dictionary A wonderful new book Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln’s Mother and Other Botanical…
The eye of a honey bee (photo credits). Flowers look very different to insect pollinators, such as honey bees, compared to what we mammals see. As the photo on the left shows, bees have compound eyes. How a bee sees patterns as a result of its compound eyes is wonderfully…