Survival of the fastest: forest flower catapults into record books

IT is the fastest pollen gun in the west, or the whole world for that matter.

The flower of the bunchberry dogwood bursts open to shoot pollen in just under 0.5 milliseconds - the fastest movement recorded in any plant, scientists said yesterday.

Bunchberry dogwood grows in dense carpets in the vast spruce fir forests of the northern United States and Canada.