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 ...

And yet there are a handful of plants on Long Island that aren’t green and don’t make their own food by using sunlight and carbon dioxide. These fascinating group of plants are known as parasitic ...

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.

Not all leafy plants are green. Some of them get all their nutrients by stealing them from other species, and lack chlorophyll. Many of these parasitic plants make their connection with the hosts ...

Two parasitic plants in a new study are losing genes related to photosynthesis and other plant functions as they continue their food-sucking habits. By Laura Baisas Published Sep 21, 2023 11:00 AM EDT ...

Some parasitic plants steal genetic material from their host plants and use the stolen genes to more effectively siphon off the host's nutrients. A new study reveals that the parasitic plant dodder ...

Thousands of plant species have adopted a “parasitic” mode of life, living off a host plant which supplies it with water and nutrients. Most of these remain harmless, but a few have evolved to become ...

An evolutionary biologists have discovered a new trophic interaction -- the first example of a parasitic plant attacking a parasitic insect on a shared host plant. The find could point to new methods ...

Balanophora shed one third of its genes as it evolved into an uber-streamlined parasitic plant, according to new research by a team led by scientists at BGI Research, and including botanists from the ...