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Celebrating Plants and People

  • A Case Of Pollinator Competition Driving Plant Evolution?

    The researchers found that when foraging alone male hummingbirds preferred the yellow flowers and female hummingbirds showed no color preference. When in competition, the males still preferred visiting plants with yellow flowers, but females tended to visit the plants with red flowers instead, due to aggression from males over the yellow flowers. Shorter-billed male hummingbirds transferred more dye particles to flowers of intermediate length, whereas longer-billed females transferred more dye particles to long flowers. The authors suggest that based on these results, hummingbird flower preference could be a mechanism driving plant diversification to suit different pollinators. (Click on title or image for full story.)

  • Has Lyme Disease Met Its Match At Last In Stevia Extract?

    A promising new preclinical study has revealed that whole stevia leaf extract possesses exceptional antibiotic activity against the exceedingly difficult to treat pathogen Borrelia Burgdorferi known to cause Lyme disease. (Click on title or image for full story.)

  • Reforestation Project Changes Communities And Women’s Lives

    The government has turned forest restoration into a business model by outsourcing nurseries to the private sector, including widows, poor women and young people. This provides the government with saplings to plant, as well as green jobs for the community. (Click on title or image for full story.)

  • Seeds That Grew Dinosaurs’ Flowers Discovered

    The world may never know if dinosaurs stopped to smell the flowers, but scientists have uncovered a few more clues about the ancient blossoms that grew alongside ankylosaurs and iguanadons. Recently, researchers discovered tiny Cretaceous flower seeds dating back 110 million to 125 million years, the oldest-known seeds of flowering plants. These puny pips offer a glimpse into the biology powering the ancient predecessors of all modern flowers. (Click on title or image for full story.)

  • Does The “Sensitive Plant” Fart? How Insensitive Is That!

    “OH MY goodness! It smells like someone has broken wind.” So says Rabi Musah of the University at Albany in New York, who has discovered a previously unknown defence mechanism in plants: roots that actively release a nasty smell when they sense the touch of a potential threat. (Click on title or image for full story.)

  • The Decline Of Agrodiversity Will Not Go Well For Us

    Globally, foods have become more alike and less diverse. As the amount of food around the world has shrunk to just a handful of crops, regional and local crops have become scarce or disappeared altogether. Wheat, rice and corn, plus palm oil and soybeans, are what we all eat now — the same type and the same amount.Yes, this increase in carbs, fats and proteins has helped feed hungry people, but on a global scale i t’s also increased our chances of becoming …“stuffed and starved.” The world overconsumes energy-dense foods but eats fewer foods rich in micronutrients (Click on title or image for full story)

  • Everything We Thought About How Trees Get Water To Great Heights Was Wrong

    While the widespread view has been that siphons work because of atmospheric pressure, recent research has shown that cohesion and gravity, and not atmospheric pressure is the driving principle. (Click on title or image for full story.)

  • Tattooed Botanist Describes (Yet Another) New Plant Species

    The new species is distinguished from several dozen other species of Calathea by the shape of its leaves. In addition, the new species’ one-to-four inflorescences–flower-bearing structures–are produced on a shoot that extends along the ground from an underground stem (rhizome), a very unusual plant character. (Click on title or image for full story.)

  • How The Fly Tells The Venus Flytrap “Kill Me Now”

    the Venus flytrap can count the number of times that its victims touch the sensory hairs on its leaves. One touch does nothing. Two closes the trap. Three primes the trap for digestion. And five …triggers the production of digestive enzymes—and more touches mean more enzymes. The plant apportions its digestive efforts according to the struggles of its prey. And the fly, by fighting for its life, tells the plant to start killing it, and how vigorously to do so. (Click on title or image for full story.)

  • Climate Change Is Destroying A Unique Partnership: Wood Rats And Creosote Bushes

    Climate Change Is Destroying A Unique Partnership: Wood Rats And Creosote Bushes

    As the climate warms, the wood rats will disappear from the Mojave or, if they are fortunate, adapt. (Click on title or image for full story)