It's Not Sex But Something Weird Happens Between Axinaea Flowers And Bird Pollinators

A small tree or shrub found in mountainous Central and South American rainforests has a most unusual relationship with the birds that pollinate its flowers, according to a new study - the plant known as Axinaea offers up its male reproductive organs as a tempting and nutritious food source for the birds. As the birds seize those bulbous stamens with their beaks, they are blasted with pollen by the flowers' complex "bellows" organs. The birds then deliver that pollen to receptive female floral organs as they forage on. Food bodies situated on male reproductive organs are otherwise only known from beetle-pollinated flowers. There is no other known example among plants of such a precise and anatomically distinct bellows organ. read more

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