Celebrating Plants and People
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The Culture, History, Economics And Magic of Hazelnuts
In the first century ce, Dioscorides prescribed its oil and milk mixed as a cough syrup in his pharmacopoeia De Materia Medica. The legendary pre-Islamic sage Luqman al-Hakim recommended taking hazelnuts with marzipan (sweetened almond paste) to fight anemia. Later, in the 11th century, the polymath Ibn Sina suggested its paste be applied to dog bites and scorpion stings. The Missouri Botanical Garden of St. Louis, which researches modern ethno-botanical medicine, suggests, however, that the nuts simply be “left for the squirrels.”
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Teaching kids about science and seed dispersal
To help children learn more about seeds and their dispersal mechanisms, try some of the experiments and questions .
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Did Lack Of Daisies Kill Off Mammoths?
Researchers think that the mighty beasts may have been bested by tiny flowers—or, more precisely, the lack of them.
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Insect Communities Decimated By Forest Destruction
While the researchers found no clear association between ant functional groups and the level of habitat degradation, all functional groups for termites were observed less frequently in the oil palm plantation and the logged forest than in the old growth forest. It may be that termites are much more dependent on old-growth forests than ants, perhaps given their dependence on cellulose found in the soil or plants.
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Researchers Combating Malaria With Local Plants
Natural products isolated from plants used in traditional medicine, which have potent anti-plasmodial action in vitro, represent potential sources of new anti-malarial drugs.
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Will You Be Driving On Dandelion Tires?
The tyre industry, which consumes about two-thirds of the world’s natural rubber, has long felt uneasy about its complete reliance on rubber-tree tapping in a handful of Southeast Asian nations which account for most of the $25 billion in annual natural-rubber output.
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What Became Of The Animals Of The Sargasso Sea?
At first glance, the animals that live in Sargassum rafts seem isolated from the rest of the world. But, like the seaweed they live in, these animal communities have many links to larger ocean food webs. For example, Sargassum animals provide essential food for sea birds, sea turtles, and bluefin tuna — all long-distance migrators. In fact, Sargassum rafts have been designated as “essential fish habitat” by the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council.
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Botany word of the day
An Illustrated guide to Botany terms. Make sense of Latin words used to describe plants and their parts.
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To Translocate Or Not? Biologists Saving Trees From Global Warming
But what if the climate warms too quickly for the trees to respond? Even as the species creeps northward a few miles, it may lose huge swaths of suitable territory to the south. The solution, some conservationists say, may be to help the trees claim new territory more quickly.
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Flowers Change Color– And Back Again — To Advertise For More Pollination
Like shopkeepers flipping their “CLOSED” signs to “OPEN”, the flowers advertise themselves as back for business by once again shifting to a lilac colour. It gives them a second chance at being pollinated.