This plant, called a fairy lantern, is a parasite that steals all its energy and nutrients from mycorrhizal fungi that dwell ...

“My long-standing aim is to rethink what it truly means to be a plant,” Kenji Suetsugu, a botanist at Kobe University in ...

Parasitic plants are notorious agricultural pests that drain nutrients from crops and cause economic losses of more than USD ...

If you grow flowers in your garden, you'll want to keep a sharp lookout for an invasive, parasitic plant that has been detected in the U.S. for the first time.

Balanophora is a plant that abandoned photosynthesis long ago and now lives entirely as a parasite on tree roots, hidden in ...

Balanophora lost photosynthesis long ago but kept tiny plastids that run key chemistry and shows how forest parasites adapt ...

A plant that looks like a fungus, lives like a parasite, and clones itself in the dark—Balanophora may be one of evolution’s ...

At the base of mossy trees, deep in the mountains of Taiwan and mainland Japan or nestled in the subtropical forests of Okinawa, grows what most might mistake for a mushroom—but it is actually a very ...

Parasitic weeds extract water and nutrients from their host plants. But what makes these parasites so successful? A study led ...

“Many people equate plants with photosynthesis, yet Balanophora illustrates that being a plant does not require being green,” ...