Science Plants can hear their pollinators and bribe them with sugar — new research Ellsworth Toohey

Coffee How caffeine became nature's secret weapon and humanity's favorite fix Mark Frauenfelder

pollination This is the madness that happens when you break open cattails Rusty Blazenhoff

robots MIT built a swarm of tiny robotic flies to pollinate flowers like bees Allan Rose Hill

mississippi Come for the pickles, stay for the agricultural history lesson Jennifer Sandlin

bugs in your food Are there wasps in your figs? Jennifer Sandlin

butterflies Get free milkweed seeds to help Monarch butterflies survive Jennifer Sandlin

Science Scientist who helped inspire Jurassic Park reveals 30 million year-old microcosm trapped in amber David Pescovitz

cyberpunk Interview with Mondo 2000's RU Sirius on the internet's techno-utopian past and clusterf*cked present Gareth Branwyn

colonialism How a 19th-century slave kickstarted the world's vanilla-farming market Clive Thompson

madagascar Why Madagascar is the world's largest vanilla producer Miss Cellania

Nature Rare "Terra the Titan" corpse flower blooming in San Francisco Rusty Blazenhoff

Kids Enjoy some flowery fireworks with these timelapses of cactus blooms Andrea James

Technology What does it mean to be human in an age of machines? Institute for the Future

happy mutants Charlie Stross talks science fiction and policy in DC next week Cory Doctorow

cards The Contraband deck tells a subtle story in card design Michael Borys

animals You probably need more pollen-covered bats in your life Andrea James

40 of the world's weirdest flowers Nadina Hughes