Balanophora shed one third of its genes as it evolved into a very streamlined parasitic plant. Balanophora is a parasitic plant found in tropical and temperate regions in Asia and tropical Africa and ...

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American Being a parasite isn’t all free drinks and ...

Parasitic weeds are ruthless freeloaders, stealing nutrients from crops and devastating harvests. But what if farmers could trick these invaders into self-destructing? Scientists at UC Riverside think ...

If you happen to come across plants of the Balanophoraceae family in a corner of a forest, you might easily mistake them for fungi growing around tree roots. Their mushroom-like structures are ...

A farmer inspects sunflower plants, the crop under threat from sunflower broomrape - Tatevosian Yana/Shutterstock A rather nasty and fast-spreading parasitic plant has made its first detected ...

This article was originally published by Knowable Magazine. Mistletoe is more than just a Yuletide kissing attraction; it plays a hugely important role in ecosystems. It is a parasitic plant—it takes ...

Parasitic plants do not haphazardly flail about looking for a host but sense volatile chemicals produced by other plants and identify potential hosts by their emissions, according to a team of Penn ...

A dodder plant begins its life looking like a tapeworm. The tiny plant, which will never grow leaves or roots, elongates in a spindly spiral. Round and round it swirls, searching for a host plant.

For most of their lives, plants in the Sapria genus are barely anything — thin ribbons of parasitic cells winding inside vines in Southeast Asian rainforests. They become visible only when they ...

A rare parasitic plant species, the Himalayan sapria (Sapria himalayana), has been recorded in the Phong Nha – Ke Bang National Park in central Vietnam, according to the park's management board.

Parasitic dodders use outgrowths called haustoria to leech water and nutrients from their host plants. Jingxiong Zhang, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China Parasitic ...

If you happen to come across plants of the Balanophoraceae family in a corner of a forest, you might easily mistake them for fungi growing around tree roots. Their mushroom-like structures are ...