Shut up! A thunderstorm’s on the way

For the first time, biologists have shown that a flower pinches shut during thunderstorms, shielding its reproductive parts from pounding, drowning rain.

Despite their reputation as a stick-in-the-mud, most plant species can move some part of their anatomy, explains William K. Smith of Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C. However, little research has focused on movements of blooms themselves.