Celebrating Plants and People
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Foragers Go Commercial And Threaten Forests
“Twenty years ago there was no commercial picking at all, but it has just escalated and is now totally out of control with literally tonnes of fungus leaving the forest.”
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Frogs Enter Hollow Bamboo To Nest: A Novel Strategy
Here, we report a novel reproductive mode where adult frogs enter hollow internodes of bamboo via a small opening, deposit direct developing eggs, and provide parental care.
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Plant Reveals New Molecule Which May Revolutionize Biotechnology
The properties of the new molecule make it a very useful tool in protein biotechnology and the development of new peptide and protein therapeutics, including anti-cancer agents.
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Fern Communities Control Gender Of Young Ferns
Older fernlings secrete pheromones that determine the sex of the younger ones — maintaining a balanced ratio so that they can all reproduce faster, the study shows.
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Urban Forest Diversity Increases Urban Bird Diversity
Managing urban green spaces to ensure that they have a good mix of tree species, including some older and larger trees, can enhance species diversity of woodland birds, a new study has shown.
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The Wonderful Chemistry Lab That Is Coffee
Most of what we taste we actually smell. The only sensations that we pick up in our mouth are sweet, sour, bitter, umami and salty. Without its smell, coffee would have only a sour or bitter taste due to the organic acids. Try it with your next cup of coffee – hold your nose as you take your first sip. The rich satisfying sensation of coffee is almost entirely due to the volatile compounds produced when we roast coffee beans. (Click on title for full story.)
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There Is Nothing Natural About The Fruits We Eat: 6,000 Years Of Genetic Manipulation
If someone handed you a peach 6,000 years ago, you might be surprised: the sour, grape-sized lump you’d be holding would hardly resemble the plump, juicy fruit we enjoy today.
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Can We Re-Design Forests For Climate Change? And If We Can, Should We?
“My general feeling is we just don’t know enough about the consequences of genetic mixing to go full force into widespread assisted migration, so I’ve been working with the Nature Conservancy in the design of experiments that we might do”
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U.S. Forests Being Stripped For European Wood Pellet Stoves. Birds Suffer
It looks like a rabbit pellet, speckled quail-egg brown, a cylinder perhaps an inch long, thick as a No. 2 pencil, with a shiny coat that brings to mind a sausage casing. There are no fillers, no binders, no added chemicals. Wood pellets are all-natural, made of nothing but wood. A single pellet is light […]
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The Complicated Relationship Of Sloths, Moths, Algae And Poop
By descending a tree to defecate, sloths transport moths to their oviposition sites in sloth dung, which facilitates moth colonization of sloth fur. Moths are portals for nutrients, increasing nitrogen levels in sloth fur, which fuels algal growth. Sloths consume these algae-gardens, presumably to augment their limited diet. These linked mutualisms between moths, sloths and algae appear to aid the sloth in overcoming a highly constrained lifestyle. (Click on image or title for full story)