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Celebrating Plants and People

  • Ancient Corn Varieties Important For Saving Modern Ones

    Up to this point, most breeders have only used elite lines to develop hybrids, because landraces are extremely difficult to use. This practice, however, greatly limits the genetic diversity breeders employ. Using novel alleles from maize landraces allows breeders to develop improved hybrids while broadening the genetic variation of their elite germplasm. This novel genetic diversity is very important to protect crops from evolving pathogens, as it means the varieties will have several resistant alleles, including alleles that have never been used in commercial germplasm before. (Click on title for full story.)

  • How Do Sunflowers Turn To Face The Sun?

    What makes the sunflower such a puzzle is that it belongs to a group of flowers that lack what is known as a pulvinus—a thickening at the base of a leaf or other structure that changes its rigidity in response to light. As the sun moves across the sky, different amounts of water flow into different parts of the pulvinus, nudging the leaf in the sunniest direction. The sunflower, with no such structure, should be immobile. (Click on title for full story.)

  • How Saguaro Cacti Depend On Distant Volcanos

    “I started noticing that these saguaro age cohorts followed notable volcanic eruptions. I knew that volcanoes drive milder summers and winters, and typically more rainfall for an extended period—two to three years after the event, which is a perfect window of time for the saguaro to get established and have a chance to survive.” (Click on title for full story.)

  • Do Reforestation Projects’ Failure Begin At The Roots?

    Experts in reforestation are concerned with the reasons why some replanted sites struggle. They suspect the problem may be solved through soil science. (Click on title for full story.)

  • Can Date Seeds Cleanse Toxic Environments?

    But what if, rather than throw these pits away, we could use them to address a very modern issue, solving a serious problem that plagues people around the world and especially those in countries ravaged by conflict such as Iraq and Syria? What if we could use them to remove toxins from the environment? )Click on title for full story.)

  • Butterflies Select Plants By Leaf Shape. But They Are Capable Of Learning And Changing

    Heliconius females can show strong host plant preferences that may not be perfectly aligned with larval food preference and survival . The ability to learn to associate new leaf shapes with oviposition sites may allow females to tailor their search image to the local Passiflora community. (Click on title for full story.)

  • Fireflies Help Farmers Save A Forest

    For years, economic forces, including low prices for farm produce, forced rural communities like Piedra Canteada to cut down trees and sell the logs. Then, in 1990, community leader Genaro Rueda Lopez got the idea that the forest could bring tourism revenue from campers. (Click on title for full story.)

  • Replacement Human Organs Grown From Plants?

    Biomaterials engineers, who create stand-ins for our own body tissues, historically focus on animal species, like pigs, with organs similar to ours. Until now, the plant kingdom has been largely neglected, but it offers a vast variety of architectures, many of which can serve the needs of human physiology. It also offers an escape route from expensive, proprietary biomaterials: an open-source approach. (Click on titl for full story.)

  • The Solution To Adolescent Aggression Is Parks And Nature

    Many studies have found nature is soothing to adults, and a few have linked kids’ exposure to green space to enhanced cognitive abilities. But this is the first to specifically explore the relationship between abundant vegetation and adolescent aggression. (Click on title for full story.)

  • Ancient Extinct Kangaroos Had Wide Ranging Plant Diets

    In this second study, we have found that ancient kangaroos didn’t feed on grass like most kangaroos do today, but instead some ate leaves from trees and shrubs, while others ate a wide variety of foods. One of the new species (Gumardee springae) was found to be predominantly a leaf eater. (Click on title for full story.)