Category: Amazing Plants

The adaptability and productivity of grass makes understanding this plant family critical for human survival, the scientists said. Someday, whether through genetic modification or selective breeding, scientists might be able to use these findings to produce other plants with four-celled stomata. This could also be one of many changes – to chloroplasts or enzymes, for example – that help plants photosynthesize more efficiently to feed a growing population. (Click on title for full story.)

Scientists made a surprising discovery on their mission to find better indicators for impending volcanic eruptions: it looks like tree rings may be able to predict eruptions. (Click on title for full story.)

Moore’s theory – which he presented at a redwood conference last month and hopes to publish next year – is that albino redwoods are in a symbiotic relationship with their healthy brethren. They may act as a reservoir for poison in exchange for the sugar they need to survive. (Click on title for full story.)

“This long record is really now painting a new picture that drought is probably more common than we thought in the tree ring records,” Dawson says. “So the redwoods are telling us a new drought story.” Embedded in the tree ring data is evidence of not one but three distinct cycles ranging from the yearly to the centennial. The most familiar, the El Niño-La Niña cycle, takes place over a few years and involves dramatic changes to the pattern of winds and water temperatures across the Equatorial Pacific. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation is a decades-long cycle in the Northern Pacific in which the waters off the West Coast fluctuate between warmer and cooler surface temperatures. The longest cycle the team found spans over a century and potentially involves wind patterns that connect the North Pacific with the North Atlantic. Dawson says the redwood cores hold the first record of all three cycles. The tree ring records show that California is caught in the middle of climatic cycles that are so long, we’ve been ignorant of them until recently. What it also means is that the worst drought we’ve seen may actually be the norm when taking the long perspective. (Click on title for full story.)

By studying the pitcher plant’s genome — and comparing its insect-eating fluids to those of other carnivorous plants — researchers have found that meat-eating plants the world over have hit on the same deadly molecular recipe, even though they are separated by millions of years of evolution. “We’re really looking at a classic case of convergent evolution,” (Click on title for full story.)

This time in Earth’s history was a bit of a catch-22 situation. It wasn’t possible to evolve complex life forms because there was not enough oxygen in the atmosphere, and there wasn’t enough oxygen because complex plants hadn’t evolved – It was only when land plants came about did we see a more significant rise in atmospheric oxygen. The history of life on Earth is closely intertwined with the physical and chemical mechanisms of our planet. It is clear that life has had a profound role in creating the world we are used to, and the planet has similarly affected the trajectory of life. I think it’s important people acknowledge the miracle of their own existence and recognise what an amazing planet this is. (Click on title for full story.)

The late date of this discovery of Africa’s tallest trees may be due to the comparably low study efforts at Kilimanjaro compared with other biodiversity hotspots. Since only a few square kilometers of this habitat of Entandrophragma are left, Kilimanjaro (and Africa) is about to lose not only a unique biogeographical archive with highly diverse vegetation, but also its tallest trees. (Click on title for full story.)

paleoecological interpretations have been rooted in understanding of modern angiosperm-dominated ecosystems. One key example is tree evolution: although often thought to reflect competition for light, light limitation is unlikely for plants with such low photosynthetic potential. Instead, during this early evolution, the capacities of trees for enhanced propagule dispersal, greater leaf area, and deep-rooting access to nutrients and the water table are all deemed more fundamental potential drivers than light. (Click on title for full story.)

If you are a plant, when life aboveground turns harsh, you have few options. Some orchids respond by going dormant, spending years to decades underground before reemerging aboveground. But an army of the right fungi may help jolt them out of dormancy, ecologists discovered in a new study (Click on title for full story.)

These cyanobacteria use the entire cell body as a lens to focus an image of the light source at the cell membrane, as in the retina of an animal eye, Although researchers are not sure what the purpose of this mechanism is, its existence suggests that a similar one could have evolved in higher plants. “If something like this is already present at the lower level of evolution, it is most likely kept,” (Click on title for full story.)