Celebrating Plants and People
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COVID19 Fears And Misinformation Leading To Deforestation Of Kashmir Valley
The fear of coronavirus runs so deep that over the past two weeks, Kashmiris employed labourers to cut down trees worth lakhs of rupees. (Click on title for full story.)
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Neanderthals Developed Tree Fiber Technology Over 40,000 Years Ago
Here we show direct evidence of fibre technology in the form of a 3-ply cord fragment made from inner bark fibres on a stone tool recovered in situ from the same site. Twisted fibres provide the basis for clothing, rope, bags, nets, mats, boats, etc. which, once discovered, would have become an indispensable part of daily life. Understanding and use of twisted fibres implies the use of complex multi-component technology as well as a mathematical understanding of pairs, sets, and numbers. Added to recent evidence of birch bark tar, art, and shell beads, the idea that Neanderthals were cognitively inferior to modern humans is becoming increasingly untenable. (CLick on title for full story.)
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Ancestors Cultivated Crops In Amazonia Over 10,000 Years Ago Following Last Ice Age
New research such as this study demonstrates that the nature of human occupation and alteration of the landscape is extensive, and this region now has evidence for the implementation of cultivation from as far back as 10,250 years [ago]. (Click on title for full story.)
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Love Will Find A Way: Damaged Plants Adjust Flowers So Pollinators Can Find Them
“Mechanical accidents happen to plants fairly often and can, in some cases, stop the plant from being able to attract pollinating insects and so, make seeds. Making seeds and propagating is a flower’s main purpose, so injuries which threaten that pose a huge problem.” The study found that bilaterally symmetrical flowers – those in which the left and right sides mirror each other, such as snapdragon, orchid, and sweet pea – can almost always restore their ‘correct’ orientation by moving individual flower stems or even moving the stalk that supports a cluster of flowers. (Click on title for full story.)
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Plants Fool Dung Beetles Into Planting Seeds
The work of a dung beetle is simple: Find dung, roll dung, bury dung and repeat. But not in South Africa, where one plant (Ceratocaryum argenteum) has found a way to exploit the system. Its seeds are spherical, very similar to the local antelope’s droppings. As if this visual trick was not enough, these seeds emit certain volatile compounds like those found in antelope dung. (Click on title for full story)
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You Can Thank Tobacco Plants That We Know About Viruses At All
When a blight of mosaic disease threatened European tobacco crops in the mid-1800s, plant pathologists set out to identify its root cause. For decades, only one forward-thinking botanist, Martinus Beijerinck, realized the source was neither a bacterial nor a fungal infection, but something completely different: a virus. (Click on title for full story.)
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Is Your Autumn Leaf Removal Plan Making Tick Problems Worse?
“Our study showed that the common fall practice of blowing or raking leaves removed from lawns and landscaping to the immediate lawn/woodland edges can result in a three-fold increase in blacklegged tick numbers in these areas the following spring, (Click on title for full story.)
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Turning Pollen Into Paper? Sponges? What else?
Scientists have found a way to turn pollen, one of the hardest materials in the plant kingdom, into a soft and flexible material, with the potential to serve as a ‘building block’ for the design of new categories of eco-friendly materials. (Click on title for full story.)
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Researchers Look To Traditional Chinese Medicine To Control Epileptic Seizures
Only extracts from the bark of Magnolia officinalis, a tree native to China, reduced seizure-like behavior in both types of fish. In tests with mice, the researchers found that the magnolia bark’s most potent anti-seizure compound, magnolol, reduced the rodents’ otherwise drug-resistant seizures. It and similar compounds in magnolia bark could provide a starting point for the development of treatments for resistant epilepsy, according to the researchers. (Click on title for full story.)
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Unraveling The Story Of America’s Most Mysterious Tree
A majestic ponderosa pine, standing tall in what is widely thought to have been the “center of the world” for the Ancestral Puebloan people, may have more mundane origins than previously believed, according to research led by tree-ring experts at the University of Arizona. (Click on title for full story.)