Category: Amazing Plants
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Plant Collectors Push Evolutionary Changes
Commercial collecting of wild plants in the Himalayas becomes unnatural selection.
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What Can YOU Do in Half a Millisecond?
Like a medieval catapult, the bunchberry dogwood shoots pollen grains into the air faster than the Venus flytrap can snap its jaws shut, giving this launcher the speed record for plants.
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Venus Flytrap Mechanics Revealed
As a vegetarian, it is nice to think about plants that eat animals rather than the other way around!
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Explosive Dwarf Mistletoe
These plants are extremely prolific and the explosive discharge mechanism assures that the seed is distanced from the source, but is not moved so far that it is unlikely to leave the stand of host conifers.
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What We Can Do For Pollinators
Since pollination is essential to crop and plant life, the Convention on Biological Diversity has adopted the International Pollinators Initiative to promote the conservation and sustainable use of pollinator diversity in agriculture and related ecosystems.
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Not How Leaves Turn Red… But Why?
Does the red-making machine turn on by accident, or do the red pigments contribute something valuable? Why would passengers fleeing the Titanic stop to repaint their staterooms?
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A Novel Way To Disperse Seeds
Brazilian botanists have caught Mother Nature playing with squirt guns.
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Mistletoe Magic
Some of the plants have flowers with trick openings. Some shoot their seeds farther than most watermelon spitters can spout. Some mistletoes grow as parasites on other parasitic mistletoes. And some give North Americans and Australians yet another way to misunderstand each other.
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Seeds Will Have Their Day In The Sun
Even as scientists develop methods to control plant reproduction, each time we yield to the temptation to pluck a ripe juicy apple from its branch, we too become pawns in one of nature's carefully devised game plans.