Celebrating Plants and People
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Africa’s Tallest Trees Discovered On Africa’s Tallest Mountain
The late date of this discovery of Africa’s tallest trees may be due to the comparably low study efforts at Kilimanjaro compared with other biodiversity hotspots. Since only a few square kilometers of this habitat of Entandrophragma are left, Kilimanjaro (and Africa) is about to lose not only a unique biogeographical archive with highly diverse…
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Why Are Canadian Municipalities Spraying Beet Juice On Icy Roads?
What do you get when you mix beet juice and salt? A nicely de-iced highway! This unusual combination of ingredients is becoming more common as cities and municipalities realize how effective it is at keeping roads clear and reducing the amount of salt needed. (Click on title for full story.)
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How Forest Trees Eat Tiny Animals
But are the pine trees in this experiment “predatory plants”? In my judgment, distinctly un-sexy Eastern white pine — a common tree in the vast northern forests of this planet — might just belong on that sexy list of deadly plants too, at least with an asterisk. (Clcik on title for full story.)
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Flower Color Attracts Bees By Creating Warmer Microenvironment
A professor and research scientist , using thermocouples, and a hypodermic tissue probe, learned that these dark petals are up to 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the surrounding atmosphere when they stand in a pool of Spring sunlight. Bees, especially fuzzy females of Carlin’s bee (Andrena carlinii), prefer to forage upside down…
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Why Did Prehistoric “Trees” Grow Tall?
paleoecological interpretations have been rooted in understanding of modern angiosperm-dominated ecosystems. One key example is tree evolution: although often thought to reflect competition for light, light limitation is unlikely for plants with such low photosynthetic potential. Instead, during this early evolution, the capacities of trees for enhanced propagule dispersal, greater leaf area, and deep-rooting access…
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A Successful Strategy To Control Asian Longhorned Beetle Infestation
The Asian longhorned beetle (Anoplophora glabripennis) is one of the 10 most dangerous quarantine pests in the world. More than 30 ALB infestations have been reported in eight European countries to date; six of these infestations have now been eradicated. In most cases, it took more than 10 years to wipe out the beetle population…
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The Lonely Archeobotanist
Now the once bustling lab is now practically empty, with Elshafaey singlehandedly attempting to keep archaeobotany alive at Helwan University. He works essentially alone in the lab researching ancient plants from archaeological sites across Egypt for his PhD. (Click on title for full story.)
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The Medical Hype About Turmeric And Curcumin May Be A Trick
Inside the golden-yellow spice turmeric lurks a chemical deceiver: curcumin, a molecule that is widely touted as having medicinal activity, but which also gives false signals in drug screening tests. For years, chemists have urged caution about curcumin and other compounds that can mislead naive drug hunters. (Click on title for full story.)
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Using Sound To “See” Inside Tree Trunks
Living trees can rot from the inside out, leaving only a hollowed trunk. Wood rot in living trees can cause overestimates of global carbon pools, timber loss in forestry, and poor tree health. Understanding wood decay in forests is of special concern in the tropics because tropical forests are estimated to harbor 96% of the…
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An Orchid Emerges From Dormancy, Saying A Lot About The Health Of Its Ecosystem
If you are a plant, when life aboveground turns harsh, you have few options. Some orchids respond by going dormant, spending years to decades underground before reemerging aboveground. But an army of the right fungi may help jolt them out of dormancy, ecologists discovered in a new study (Click on title for full story.)