WHAT has no legs, lives in the forest and accelerates with a g-force 800times greater than a rocket taking off? It’s the stamen of the bunchberry dogwood (Cornus canadensis), a ground-covering plant with a pollen-dispersion system now crowned the fastest mover of the plant world.
To record the flower’s explosive pollen propulsion, Joan Edwards at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, had to use digital recording equipment designed to film car-crash tests at 100,000 frames per second. “It’s truly amazing to watch, and so beautiful,” says Edwards. “With an acceleration of 24,000 metres per second per second, it’s much faster than many animal movements.”…
