Alpine plant makes its own wooly cover

Usually, when a plant cell is pierced, it pops like a water balloon. This is why researchers were baffled about the long strands of flavonoid "wool" coming from inside the cells of an alpine cushion plant with pretty yellow flowers known as Dionysia tapetodes.  "The leaves are covered in tiny hairs called trichomes. Each trichome has a spherical shaped glandular cell at the end - like a stalk with a single round cell at the tip - and we could see the threads emerging straight out …