BUNCHBERRY EXPLOSION

Joan Edwards is famous! Yes, one of my favorite professors at Williams has a (brief) paper in Nature and a little interview on NPR, all on the bunchberry dogwood, Cornus canadensis. Sarah Klionsky ’03 is also one of the co-authors, and she was on NPR, too. For those of you who don’t know, the bunchberry dogwood is a small flowering plant that grows close to the ground. If you’ve done any hiking in northern forests you’ve probably walked right by it. Like other dogwoods, the small flowers are surrounded by four large bracts. Joan et al. found that the flowers open with explosive force when touched, apparently setting some kind of a speed record in the plant world. This catapults pollen all over the insect that touched the trigger, providing a mechanism of dispersal. As Joan says, “Those insects don’t stand a chance!” Ah, classic Joan.