Flowers of insect-pollinated plants attract visitors by visual and / or olfactory cues but sometimes, it appears, other organs may steal the scene. In an article published in the January 2003 issue of Ecology Letters, scientists from the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique have found that the European dwarf palm, which grows on the Mediterranean coasts, attracts its specialised pollinating weevil in a very surprising way.
In this palm, flowers produce no odour and are not visually distinguishable at long distance. However, during the flowering season, the palm's leaves produce a specific fragrance, with typical floral notes. The researchers showed that only the odour emitted by the leaves was attractive to the pollinating weevil. The function of attracting pollinators has thus been transferred from flowers to leaves. Asking why in some plants vegetative organs " nose around " in floral business opens new questions about the evolution of pollination systems.
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