Research by Assistant Professor Jacob S. Suissa at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, is revealing complexity in how ferns have evolved. Instead of the vascular structure inside fern stems ...

A Japanese plant species with a peculiar leaf pattern recently revealed unexpected insight into how almost all plants control their leaf arrangement. Leaves can be enjoyed for their shade, autumn ...

Leaves are enjoyed for their shade, autumn colors, or taste, and the arrangement of leaves on a plant is a practical way to identify a species. However, the details of how plants control their leaf ...

Leaf arrangement with one leaf per node is called alternate phyllotaxis whereas arrangement with two or more leaves per node is called whorled phyllotaxis. Common alternate types are distichous ...

Steve Nix is a member of the Society of American Foresters and a former forest resources analyst for the state of Alabama. Hickory trees have a leaf with less than nine leaflets and an alternate leaf ...

The spiral pattern of an Aloe polyphylla plant at the University of California Botanical Garden. Stan Shebs via Wikicommons under CC BY-SA 3.0 To the untrained eye, plants may appear to grow rather ...

Steve Nix is a member of the Society of American Foresters and a former forest resources analyst for the state of Alabama. In palmately compound leaves, the leaflets form and radiate from a single ...

An unusual arrangement of leaves in a 407-million-year-old fossilized plant is complicating scientists’ understanding of plant evolution. Most land plants living today have spiral patterns involving ...

If your eyes have ever been drawn to the arrangement of leaves on a plant stem, the texture of a pineapple or the scales of a pinecone, then you have unknowingly witnessed brilliant examples of ...

Leaves can be enjoyed for their shade, autumn colors, or taste, and the arrangement of leaves on a plant is a practical way to identify a species. However, the details of how plants control their leaf ...