Balanophora plants represent an extreme example of this shift. They do not produce their own food through photosynthesis but instead draw nutrients directly from the roots of other plants. Most of ...

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

This desert plant rewired photosynthesis to thrive at 120°F. Its hot secret could help our essential crops survive climate ...

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

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 ...

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 ...

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

Present day life fully depends on photosynthetic organisms like plants and algae that capture and convert CO 2. At the heart of these processes lies an enzyme called Rubisco that captures more than ...

For photosynthesis, one photon is all it takes. Only a single particle of light is required to spark the first steps of the biological process that converts light into chemical energy, scientists ...

Photosynthesis is a chemical process by which plants, some bacteria, and algae convert energy derived from sunlight to chemical energy. This is an important process for biological life on earth ...

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 ...