Category: Amazing Plants

There are genera – or groups – that are very species rich; some of them have 100, 200 or 300 species in them but we have not had a good reason for why these species-rich genera exist.

Ecological evidence for complex decision making in plants thus includes a structural memory (the second seed), simple reasoning (integration of inner and outer conditions), conditional behavior (abortion), and anticipation of future risks (seed predation).

It seems like there are 11 caterpillar species that only eat this plant species

This is the first study to demonstrate that the prey capture mechanism in a carnivorous plant is constrained by climate.

By land or by sea? That‘s the question scientists have been pondering for decades when it comes to the bottle gourd, a plant with a hard-skinned fruit that‘s used by cultures all over the world to make lightweight containers and other tools.

Out of the vast number of vanilla orchid species only three are commercially cultivated for consumption, the most common of which is the Mexican vanilla, now cultivated in Madagaskar. Other breeds are used in the perfume industry but most of the species are simply flowers growing in the tropics. Now Czech botanists have uncovered a brand new species in a largely unexplored nature reserve in southern Vietnam.

Most of the 12 new species described in 2013 are threatened and our Nepenthes extincta, published just before Christmas, probably IS extinct already , due to ongoing open-cast mining for nickel which is used in making the stainless steel that we all use.

The primary and secondary bulbil shoots were found to be capable of growing into independent plants making it possible to use them as propagules to develop a homogeneous clonal population hitherto unavailable in coconut.

Basically the Australian Christmas tree has all its neighbour plants working for it. On searching for host roost the Christmas tree roots can spread over 100 m or more. Hence a single Christmas tree can cover an extensive area parasitizing a vast number of different plant species,mostly shrubs and herbs