Plants that acoustically interact with bats

Nectar-feeding bats are great pollinators, but locating flowers at night can be difficult. While not having the high pitched, highly tuned sonar of insectivorous bats, nectar feeding bats get some help from plants that have parabolic reflectors that bounce their acoustic signals right back at them as they approach flowers. While several flowers, like the standard petals of these neotropical legumes (Mucuna), have acoustic reflectors, new research has found a plant that grows leaves with a parabolic shape right above their inflorescences to guide bats to their flowers.

Acoustic Botany? Not hearing much.

Who hasn't thumped a melon to determine if its basso tones resonated with ripeness? But acoustic botany is sounding a little bit too new agey for the Phactor's tastes. Consider this statement: "Mankind altered nature for hundreds of years. Think of flowers and mind altering weeds." First sentence true. Second, um, not so. OK we've kept mutant sterile roses alive, and some plants do produce hallucinogens, but none because of human selective activities. Cannabis doesn't make THC because of humans, sorry, it isn't all about us. The rest of the brief narrative suggests the author really doesn't know very much about botany or the genetics of plant breeding. But maybe they can thump a mean melon, otherwise the Phactor isn't hearing very much.