FYFD

Tag: plants

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    “Self-pollination in a flower of thymeleaf speedwell (Veronica serpyllifolia)”

    Though we rarely notice their movement in the moment, plants, and especially their flowers, are frequently on the move. Here, retired engineer Jay McClellan captures a thymeleaf speedwell flower as it opens, then pushes a stamen toward its pistil, thereby pollinating itself. Like much of the motion executed by plants, these movements come from pumping water between different cells, swelling and shrinking them as needed to execute the overall motion. (Video and image credit: J. McClellan; via Colossal)

  • Closing a Venus Fly Trap

    Closing a Venus Fly Trap

    The Venus fly trap has long fascinated scientists with its ability to catch fast-moving prey. Just how the plant closes its “trap” leaf so quickly is a matter of debate. A new study gives us more detail–but not complete clarity–about what’s going on.

    One way that plants move rapidly is by moving water into or out of cells, changing their internal pressure. The new experiments showed that this is not what the fly trap does. Specifically, by watching the speed at which individual Venus fly trap cells take up water, the team concluded that closing the leaf would take 30-150 seconds–far more than the 1 second observed.

    Instead, the team showed that the trap’s rapid closure happens because the plant’s cell walls rapidly soften, making the leaf unable to stay open against previously-stored elastic energy. Instead, the trap snaps closed. The physical mechanism behind the softening is still unclear, though, so the charismatic plant still has mysteries for us to discover. (Image credit: N. Suzuki; research credit: J. Ryu et al.; via Nature and Gizmodo)

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  • The Best of FYFD 2025

    The Best of FYFD 2025

    Happy 2026! This will be a big year for me. I’ll be finishing up and turning in the manuscript for my first book — which flows between cutting edge research, scientists’ stories, and the societal impacts of fluid physics. It’s a culmination of 15 years of FYFD, rendered into narrative. I’m so excited to share it with you when it’s published in 2027.

    As always, though, we’ll kick off the year with a look back at some of FYFD’s most popular posts of 2025. (You can find previous editions, too, for 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, and 2014.) Without further ado, here they are:

    What a great bunch of topics! I’m especially happy to see so many research and research-adjacent posts were popular. And a couple of history-related posts; I don’t write those too often, but I love them for showing just how wide-ranging fluid physics can be.

    Interested in keeping up with FYFD in 2026? There are lots of ways to follow along so that you don’t miss a post.

    And if you enjoy FYFD, please remember that it’s a reader-supported website. I don’t run ads, and it’s been years since my last sponsored post. You can help support the site by becoming a patron, buying some merch, or simply by sharing on social media. And if you find yourself struggling to remember to check the website, remember you can get FYFD in your inbox every two weeks with our newsletter. Happy New Year!

    (Image credits: droplet – F. Yu et al., starlings – K. Cooper, espresso – YouTube/skunkay, fountain – Primal Space, Uranus – NASA, turbulence – C. Amores and M. Graham, capsule – A. Álvarez and A. Lozano-Duran, melting ice – S. Bootsma et al., puquios – Wikimedia, cooling towers – BBC, solar wind – NASA/APL/NRL, Lake Baikal – K. Makeeva, sprite – NASA, roots – W. van Egmond, sunflowers – Deep Look)

    1. I know what I did. ↩︎
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    Cornflower Roots Growing

    As children, most of us plant a seed or two and watch it sprout, but we never get a view quite like this one. This microscopic timelapse shows the roots of a cornflower plant extending into moist, porous soil, establishing xylem, and extending root hairs outward to collect water and nutrients to fuel further growth. At the end, there’s even a close-up view of flow inside the root hairs. What an incredible glimpse inside a world we so often take for granted! (Video and image credit: W. van Egmond; via Colossal)

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  • Listening for Pollinators

    Listening for Pollinators

    Can plants recognize the sound of their pollinators? That’s the question behind this recently presented acoustic research. As bees and other pollinators hover, land, and take-off, their bodies buzz in distinctive ways. Researchers recorded these subtle sounds from a Rhodanthidium sticticum bee and played them back to snapdragons, which rely on that insect. They found that the snapdragons responded with an increase in sugar and nectar volume; the plants even altered their gene expression governing sugar transport and nectar production. The researchers suspect that the plants evolved this strategy to attract their most efficient pollinators and thereby increase their own reproductive success. (Image credit: E. Wilcox; research credit: F. Barbero et al.; via PopSci)

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  • “Spines”

    “Spines”

    Water droplets cling to spine-covered plant life in this series from photographer Tom Leighton. The hairs are hydrophobic — notice how spherical the drops appear. Many plants make parts of their leaves and stems hydrophobic in order to redirect water toward their roots, where it can be taken in. Others use hair-like awns to collect and draw in dew that supplements their water capture. (Image credit: T. Leighton; via Colossal)

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    How Sunflowers Follow the Sun

    Sunflower blossoms face east, presenting their blooms to the morning sun and the bees that come exploring with it. But before they grow their massive flower, each plant spends the day following the sun, greeting it in the east and tracking it westward all day. Overnight, the plant reorients eastward to start over again. The motion occurs thanks to the plant internally shifting its water supply. During the day, it swells cells on the east-facing side of the plant, gradually lengthening that side and causing the plant to tip westward. At night, it switches to swelling the west-facing side. Why go to all this trouble? By following the sun, the plant is able to photosynthesize and grow more effectively. (Video and image credit: Deep Look)

    Sunflower plants follow the sun during the day and reset overnight.
    Sunflower plants follow the sun during the day and reset overnight.
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    A Pitcher Plant’s Rain-Triggered Trap

    Pitcher plants all use slippery rims and sticky digestive juices to capture and trap their insect prey. But two species of pitcher plant independently evolved an extra trap: a rain-activated springboard lid. Both the Seychelles pitcher plant and the slender pitcher plant — separated geographically by 6000 kilometers — have a springy, near-horizontal “lid” that sticks out over their pitcher. The underside of the surface is slippery, though less so than the pitcher’s lip and walls. Unsuspecting ants crawl under the lid, confident that they can keep their footing, and then — bang — a rain drop hits the springboard. That impact catapults the insect directly into the drink. There’s no escaping now.

    How did two widely separated, independently evolving plants both settle on this technique? Scientists think it was random chance. Pitcher plants are highly variable in their pitcher size, shape, and features. The scientists suggest that by trying lots of random combinations, these two species hit upon a particular arrangement that works really well for them. (Video and image credit: Science)

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  • Dry Plants Warn Away Moths

    Dry Plants Warn Away Moths

    Drought-stressed plants let out ultrasonic distress cries that moths use to avoid plants that can’t support their offspring. In ideal circumstances, a plant is constantly pulling water up from the soil, through its roots, and out its leaves through transpiration. This creates a strong negative pressure — varying from 2 to 17 atmospheres’ worth — inside the plant’s xylem. If there’s not enough water to keep the plant’s inner flow going, cavitation occurs — essentially a tiny vacuum bubble opens in the xylem. That cavitation isn’t silent; it creates a click at ultrasonic frequencies above human hearing. But just because we don’t hear it doesn’t mean that sound goes unheard.

    In fact, recent research suggests that, not only do moths hear the plant’s cavitation cries, female moths will avoid laying eggs on a healthy plant that sounds like it’s cavitating. Evolutionarily, this makes sense. Hatchlings rely on their birth plant for food and habitat; if an adult moth picks a dying, drought-stressed plant, its offspring won’t survive. It pays to be sensitive to the plant’s signs of distress. (Image credit: Khalil; research credit: R. Seltzer et al.; via NYTimes)

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  • Inside the Squirting Cucumber

    Inside the Squirting Cucumber

    Though only 5 cm long, the squirting cucumber can spray its seeds up to 10 meters away. The little fruit does so through a clever combination of preparation and ballistic maneuvers. Ahead of launch, the plant actually moves water from the fruit into the stem; this reorients the cucumber so that its long axis sits close to 45 degrees. It also makes the stem thicker and stiffer.

    This high-speed video shows the explosive release of the squirting cucumber's seeds.
    This high-speed video shows the explosive release of the squirting cucumber’s seeds.

    When the burst happens, fruit spews out a jet of mucus that propels the seeds at up to 20 m/s. The initial seeds move the fastest — thanks to the fruit’s high-pressure reservoir — and fly the furthest. As the pressure drops, the jet slows and the fruit’s rotation sends the seeds higher, causing them to land closer to the original plant. With multiple fruits in different orientations, a single plant can spread its seeds in a fairly even ring around itself. (Research and image credit: F. Box et al.; via Gizmodo)

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