Many wild bees prefer flowers in the
violet-blue range—in part because these blossoms tend to produce high volumes
of nectar. But it’s not easy for plants to produce blue flowers. Instead, a new
study shows that many have evolved “blue halos” to
allure bees, nanoscale structures on their petals that produce a blue glow
when light hits them. The blue halo is created by tiny, irregular
striations—usually lined up in parallel fashion—and is found in all major
groups of flowering plants pollinated by insects, the scientists report today
in Nature. They made their find by using scanning electron microscopy to
examine every type of angiosperm—or flowering plant—including grasses,
herbaceous plants, shrubs, and trees.
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