Flowers Pop With Pollen

America’s woodlands will soon be carpeted with delicate bunchberry dogwood flowers -- or maybe not so delicate.

A team of scientists has reported that the blossoms explode open in less than 0.5 milliseconds and with 800 times the acceleration experienced by astronauts -- the fastest plant movement on record, making the snap of a Venus’ flytrap appear glacial by comparison.

Joan Edwards, professor of biology at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., and colleagues began their investigation into Cornus canadensis’ exploding flowers after a botanical excursion.

A student, Sarah Klionsky, stuck her nose near a bunch of flowers. “Oh, something went poof!” Edwards recalled her saying.

“I’d never known anything that poofed out of those flowers,” said Edwards, whose study was published in the current issue of the journal Nature.

Edwards transported hundreds of still-closed flowers back to her lab, avoiding the word “explosive” when explaining her cargo to airport security.

Filming the flowers with a 1,000-frames-per-second camera produced blurred images because the motions were too fast. Clear images were finally obtained with a 10,000-frames-per-second camera.

The four-petaled flower bursts open when a large pollinating insect lands on a trigger hair. When the petals unfurl, the pollen-bearing filaments inside spring straight, much like a medieval catapult.

The motion sprays pollen on the insect or into the air to be caught by the wind, helping to pollinate new flowers.