Climate change is altering the smell of rosemary, affecting its quality and quantity.
Grégoire Lannoy/Flickr
As climatic conditions change, plants’ odours are altered, with direct consequences for pollination, especially by bees.
This guinea flower is called ‘fierce’ after its sharp, painful needles.
The Conversation/Shutterstock
The guinea flower grows right across Australia.
Anett / shutterstock
Many roses are grown in energy-intensive greenhouses, shipped long distances or treated with chemicals. Here’s what to ask your florist or supermarket.
Ornamental craft made from palm leaves and pine cone in grass baskets are sold in Eswatini.
Deepa Pullanikkatil
Non-Timber Forest Products don’t often feature in discussions about poverty reduction and alleviation.
Rhododendron lochiae, photographed on Bell Peak.
Image by Dan McLeod
European settlers suspected Australia’s high tropical forests hid native rhododendrons.
Marc Freestone/The Conversation
Scientists are racing against the clock to figure out how to propagate the rare leek orchid before it goes extinct.
Salajean/Shutterstock.com
Fields of sunflowers are now a common sight all over the world – but this has only been the case relatively recently.
ConstantinosZ/Shutterstock.com
That pre-sleep herbal tea may be doing many people a lot of good.
A honeybee (left), a scarab beetle (middle), and a fly (right) feeding on flowers of the white rock rose in a Mediterranean scrubland.
Aphrodite Kantsa.
Rather than trying to out-compete each other, flowers may work together to attract bees en masse. It’s the sort of approach that is effective in the world of advertising too.
Millions of flowers are imported to Australia from Kenya each year.
REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson
Australians import millions of flowers for Valentine’s Day. Let’s consider some ways to be eco-friendly.
Detail from Rachel Ruysch, Still life with flowers in a glass vase, 1716, oil on canvas, 48.5 x 39.5 cm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
During her lifetime, the paintings of Dutch artist Rachel Ruysch sold for higher prices than those of Rembrandt. Why, then, have her talents not been more widely acknowledged in the centuries since?
Poppies at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.
katatrix/shuttershock.com
The wildflowers that WWI soldiers encountered in Europe become symbols of remembrance and the fragility of life. The red poppy in particular is a powerful motif in Australian war art and photography.
Hervé Sauquet & Jürg Schönenberger
Scientists have reconstructed the common ancestor of everything from rose bushes to oak trees, ivy or wheat.
*Psyche Delia*/Flickr
Garden pollinators can turn their noses up at the flowers human eyes find most beautiful.
‘This is our patch.’
Shutterstock
They’re not just a pretty spring sight – behind the scenes, bluebells are ruthless competitors.
There are fewer than a thousand Graveside gorge wattles in Kakadu National Park.
Parks Australia
We know very little about Australia’s most threatened plants.
Geoff Caddick/EPA
The relentless pursuit of showy flowers for garden display – as seen at Chelsea Flower Show – has seen some odd uses of radiation and chemicals .
Ben Nelms / Reuters
Essential reading for green-fingered urbanites and guerrilla gardeners.
A hoverfly on a sunflower.
David Kleijn
Next time you reach for the honey, spare a thought for the other vital insects that pollinate our crops.
Australian flowers and their pollinators have evolved a specific way of communicating – all based upon colour.
aussiegall/Flickr
In Australia, honeyeaters are far and away the most abundant and important nectar-feeding birds, so also the most important avian pollinators of flowers. What effect has their visual perception had on…