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Celebrating Plants and People

  • Earth’s Vegetation 50-Million Years Ago Revealed At Last

    They found something surprising — habitats lost dense tree cover and opened up much earlier than previously thought based on other paleobotanic studies. This is significant because the decline in vegetation cover occurred during the same period as cooling ocean temperatures and the evolution of animals with the type of teeth that feed in open, dusty habitats.

  • “Mister Cocoa,” Using Horticulture To Save Chocolate

    The industry desperately needs new cocoa varieties – plants better at resisting pests and disease, that produce more beans, that are more resilient in different environments. Most cocoa growers are subsistence farmers on tiny plots of a couple of hectares, in some of Africa’s poorest corners. They can’t afford to experiment. It’s up to the rest of the world to help.

  • Biochar: Green Miracle or Not Living Up To The Promise?

    But there are still many questions about biochar, particularly in terms of making sure that it is affordable and has positive effects. In some studies, the material has actually reduced yields. Part of the difficulty is that biochar can be produced from all kinds of biomass and at different temperatures and speeds, which leads to huge variation in the substance — and in results.

  • Carnivorous Plant Exploits Ant Social Structure

    By ‘switching off’ their traps for part of the day, pitcher plants ensure that scout ants can return safely to the colony and recruit nest-mates to the trap. Later, when the pitcher becomes wet, these followers get caught in one sweep. What looks like a disadvantage at first sight, turns out to be a clever strategy to exploit the recruitment behaviour of social insects.

  • Controlling Invasive Plants… With Goats

    Each country has its own invasive species and rampant plants with a tendency to take over. In most, the techniques for dealing with them are similar – a mixture of powerful chemicals and diggers. But in the US a new weapon has joined the toolbox in recent years – the goat.

  • Scientists Look To Plants For Self-Repairing Solar Cells

    What our paper is good for is starting to think about device lifetime and borrowing concepts from nature. Can we make cells that have an infinite lifetime?

  • Plants Protect Themselves With Fake Spider Webs

    If a plant can’t attract a spider bodyguard, the next best thing might be to fake it. By mimicking the signs that a spider is nearby, a web being an obvious signal, the plants could scare off insect pests without having to invest in rewards or attractants for actual spiders.

  • Fourteenth-century Murder Mystery Solved! The Plant Did It

    It is still possible that Cangrande’s consumption of foxglove was a terrible mistake, Fornaciari and his colleagues wrote. But if the nobleman was intentionally poisoned with foxglove — perhaps disguised in a mixture of chamomile and black mulberry — there are a few likely suspects. Rival seats of power in the region, including the Republic of Venice or Ducate of Milan, may have been behind the murder. Or perhaps Cangrande was killed by someone even closer to him: Mastino II della Scala, his ambitious nephew and successor.

  • Mycorrhizal Fungi & Plants: Every Relationship Is Different

    In the study, the research team worked with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. These are known to colonize the roots of land plants. The plants benefit from this, because the fungus provides them with nutrients and minerals. However, are the impacts of this marriage of convenience with the fungus on plant chemistry equal for all plants? That is what the researchers wanted to find out.

  • Have Flower Colors Evolved To Protect Pollen?

    That protecting pollen from UV damage is a cause of floral colour variation is an important conclusion, although it does not rule out other factors from being as (or more) significant, including the effects of UV on other plant functions. Nevertheless, it is somewhat ironic that, after 180 years of research on Gloger’s rule by zoologists, some of the strongest evidence for the driver of that latitudinal pattern comes from research on plants