The mystery that is the origin of flowering plants has been partially solved thanks to a team from the Laboratoire de Physiologie Cellulaire et Végétale (CNRS/Inra/CEA/Université Grenoble Alpes), in collaboration with the Reproduction et Développement des Plantes laboratory (CNRS/ENS Lyon/Inra/Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1) and Kew Gardens (UK). Their discovery, published in the journal New Phytologist on February 24, 2017, sheds light on a question that much intrigued Darwin: the appearance of a structure as complex as the flower over the course of evolution.