Giant flowers – The raffiesia flower, also known as the ‘corpse flower’, grows up to 1 meter (3ft) wide and smells like rotting flesh. Interestingly, the parasitic raffiesia plant is a relative of plants whose flower size is only a few millimeters wide, which suggests that the raffiesia flower size increased almost 80 fold over millions of years.

Tree Hibernation – Under certain harsh conditions, trees such as Douglas Fir and pine are capable of shutting down their metabolism to a “near death” state as a survival mechanism. Previously, it was believed that temperature triggered this event. However, a study from Indiana University has shown that water availability, not temperature, may be the trigger.

Wheat strikes back – A newly discovered gene in wheat produces a protein fights off attacking insects, such as Hessian fly larvae, by effectively starving the insect to death. The wheat protein, called lectin, is believed to prevent nutrient uptake by the larvae’s stomach lining. And, as if that’s not enough, the wheat protein also ‘tastes bad’. The plant response is highly localized: only cells that are attacked by the larvae produce lectin. Researchers are investigating ways to use this system to develop better strains of insect resistant wheat.

Flowering plant evolution – New evidence identifies the event that probably initiated the rapid evolution of flowering plants after divergence from the ancestral non-flowering plants. An event that Darwin called the “abominable mystery”.