News articles tagged with 'orchid'
Orchid wears the scent of death
— 14 Mar 2011 19:57 | BiologySex and violence, or at least death, are the key to reproduction for the orchid Satyrium pumilum. Research led by Timotheues van der Niet at the University of KwaZulu-Natal shows that…
Wealth of orchid varieties is down to busy bees and helpful fungi, says study
— 31 Jan 2011 16:31 | BiologyScientists have discovered why orchids are one of the most successful groups of flowering plants - it is all down to their relationships with the bees that pollinate them and the fungi…
Natural reforestation in southern Pyrenees favours orchid
— 1 Dec 2010 17:25 | BiologyA 13-year study has been key to understanding how and why an orchid species (Cypripedium calceolus), which is endangered in some countries in Europe, is surviving and recovering in…
Dracula orchids and goblin spiders
— 30 Oct 2010 16:20 | BiologyDracula orchids tempt flies by masquerading as mushrooms. Goblin spiders lurk unseen in the world's leaf litter. The natural world is often just as haunting as the macabre costumes…
Orchid tricks hoverflies
— 15 Oct 2010 12:14 | BiologyEven Darwin was a self-admitted orchid lover. Dictionaries describe orchids as exotic ornamentals. Indeed, these plants - more than 30000 different species are thought to exist - are…
Ecologists find new clues on climate change in 150-year-old pressed plants
— 22 Sep 2010 11:25 | BiologyPlants picked up to 150 years ago by Victorian collectors and held by the million in herbarium collections across the world could become a powerful - and much needed - new source of…
Scientists find new home for threatened orchids
— 3 Jun 2010 15:13 | BiologyFor many people uprooting and moving to a new home is a stressful and time consuming exercise, however it pales in comparison to the complexity of relocating native populations of rare…
Researchers learn about role of bees in tropical ecosystems using radio transmitters
— 27 May 2010 14:01 | BiologyA New York State Museum scientist is one of several researchers who have become the first to use tiny radio transmitters to track bees over long distances in a forest habitat, yielding…
First radio tracking of tropical orchid bees
— 27 May 2010 11:23 | BiologyBlue-green orchid bees zip through increasingly scarce patches of tropical forest pollinating rare flowers. For the first time, researchers at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute…
Breeding orchid species creates a new perfume
— 22 Apr 2010 09:29 | BiologySome orchids mimic the scent of a female insect in order to attract males for pollination. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Evolutionary Biology found that breeding…