News Plants

Projectile pollen helps this flower edge out reproductive competition

Pollen blasts from Hypenea macrantha flowers knock competitors’ pollen off hummingbird beaks

A person's grasps a hummingbird skull between their fingers and pokes it into a red flower's cup of petals

To see if Hypenea macrantha flowers blow competitors’ pollen from hummingbird beaks, researchers poked skulls of the birds laden with fluorescent pollen into flowers (as shown) and tracked how much remained.

Bruce Anderson

By Nala Rogers

Read another version of this article at Science News Explores

Some flowers may be using their pollinators as sexual battlegrounds.