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Celebrating Plants and People

  • Worms Farming Under The Sea

    Marine worms have been spotted growing sprouts in their burrows, a type of cultivation never seen before in animals other than humans. (Click on title for full story.)

  • How An Invasive Plant Confused Birdwatchers

    An ornithological mystery has been solved! Puzzling red feathers have been popping up in eastern North America’s “yellow-shafted” population of Northern Flickers, but they aren’t due to genes borrowed from their “red-shafted” cousins to the west, according to a new study in The Auk: Ornithological Advances. Instead, the culprit is a pigment that the birds are ingesting in the berries of exotic honeysuckle plants. (Click on title for full story.)

  • Obituary For The Oldest Tree Of The Eastern US Forest (600 Years!)

    If the 600-year-old age estimates are correct, its youth coincided with Britain’s defeat of the French in the Battle of Agincourt and Gutenberg’s invention of movable type. And, of course, all of the voyages by explorers such as Christopher Columbus. (Click on title for full story.)

  • Plant Produces Chemical Whose Activity Is So Amazing It Was Named “Miraculin”

    Miracle fruit, the berry of the Synsepalum dulcificum plant, grows naturally in West Africa and the locals there have long known of its sweetening properties. Pop one of the little berries in the mouth and for an hour, foods like pickles, beer, grapefruit or lime, taste like sweet versions of their former selves. More recently, the effects of the miracle fruit have been popularized by flavor-tripping parties, so named because of the odd sensational resemblance to the effects of hallucinogens. Or as Keiko Abe, one of the team leads, reports, the effect is rather magical. (Click on title for full story.)

  • Bats Are Better At Metabolizing Vitamin A From Plants Than We Are. A Teachable Moment?

    The white fruit bat’s skin is a distinctive yellow, and particularly noticeable in hairless external features of the ears and nose, the integument. The researchers used high-performance liquid chromatography in combination with time-of-flight mass spectrometry in order to determine the specific carotenoid expressed in the bat’s skin. They theorize that the bat’s dietary source for lutein is the red ripe fruit of the Ficus colubrinae fig tree. (Click on title for full story.)

  • How Biodiversity On The Farm Reduces Pest Problems

    Left to its own defenses, a farm field growing a variety of plants tends to attract fewer insect pests than a field growing just one type of crop. While scientists and farmers have noted that difference for years, the reasons behind it have been poorly understood. (Click on title for full story.)

  • An Especially Bizarre Strategy For A Plant To Deceive And Abuse Pollinators

    These types of deceptive plants that manipulate their visitors and abuse them via pollination without reward are not all that rare, Today researchers estimate that there are around 15,000 such plants. However, the parachute flower, which is found in xerophytic shrublands and belongs to the genus Ceropegia, employs a particularly surprising strategy. (Click on title for full story.)

  • Why Doesn’t Photosynthesis Short-Circuit On Hot Sunny Days? Mystery Solved.

    “Now the mystery is solved and a new regulatory mechanism defined. Not only is the question solved, but it could have real implications for understanding limitations to plant growth.” (Click on title for full story.)

  • Preserving Forests Makes Farms Better

    The literature review showed that trees on farms and in agricultural landscapes in most cases result in improved food security via, e.g., reduced pest problems, improved soil fertility and water regulation. The positive effects were most consistent in semi-arid areas. In general, trees in the agricultural landscape were positive, but in some cases a decline in production of particular crops was noted as a trade-off. Very few of the available studies had investigated the production of wood, medicinal products, fruits and nuts, and no studies had looked at cultural ecosystem services such as recreation and spiritual values. This makes it difficult to establish all the synergies and trade-offs associated with trees in the landscape. (Click on title for full story.)

  • How An Early Feminist Leader Wrote A Children’s Botany Book To Talk About Sex

    As an extension of Elmy’s activism, Baby Buds made a covert stand for sexual equality at a time when British politics were actively working against it. (Click on title for full story).