Category: Plants & People

In Mendoza the police file on the case has long since disappeared, and in Ugarteche only rumors remain — of a pickup seen lurking at Condor Huasi and the arrival and departure of two Bolivians that day from the nearby airport. But, according to Cabrera at least, the long career of Nazi Germany’s top botanist was on the cusp of a dramatic final act before he was cut down. “Heinz was very close,” he says. “Everything was ready; we were going to eliminate coca.” (Click on title for full story.)

This study is the first to our knowledge to directly examine the effects of lessons in nature on subsequent classroom engagement. We found higher levels of classroom engagement after lessons in nature than after carefully matched classroom-based counterparts; these differences could not be explained by differences in teacher, instructional approach, class (students, classroom, and class size), time of year, or time of day, nor the order of the indoor and outdoor lessons on a given topic. It would seem that lessons in nature boost subsequent classroom engagement, and boost it a great deal; after a lesson in nature, teachers were able to teach for almost twice as long without having to interrupt instruction to redirect students’ attention. This nature advantage persisted across 10 different weeks and lesson topics, and held not only for a teacher with positive expectations for nature-based lessons but also for a teacher who anticipated negative effects of such lessons. The findings here suggest that lessons in nature allow students to simultaneously learn classroom curriculum while rejuvenating their capacity for learning, or “refuel in flight.” (Click on title for full story.)

Small-scale irrigation systems similar to MGK were established at the Geokysur river delta oasis in southeast Turkmenistan about 3,000 B.C. and further west at the Tepe Gaz Tavila settlement in Iran about 5,000 B.C. The Wadi Faynan farming community, established in a desert environment in southern Jordan during the late Bronze Age, has an irrigation system nearly identical to the one at MGK, including boulder-constructed canals, cisterns and field boundaries. (Click on title for full story.)

The oldest of these jars came from 8,000 years ago. It’s the earliest artifact ever found showing humans consuming juice from the Eurasian grapes that are the foundation of today’s wine industry. (Click on title for full story.)

Newly published DNA research from a team of scientists and indigenous collaborators upturns botanical history, pointing to a vast and unacknowledged human influence in the distribution of Australia’s native plants. (Click on title for full story.)

In his 20 years in the Navy, Joseph deployed five times and saw dozens of friends die. “I relive those incidents in my head every day. So the garden kinda puts that in peace when I walk, when I walk thought the front gate it really puts my mind at ease. It takes away the darkness and brings some lightness. I used to have migraines all the time and I’m down to one or two a month. And I think that’s due in part to constantly working the garden,” Joseph said. (Click on title for full story.)

Jackfruit seeds are a waste product that can be fermented, roasted and converted to flour imparting a chocolate aroma, according to research. (Click on title for full story.)

The country lost most of its trees more than a thousand years ago, when Viking settlers took their axes to the forests that covered one-quarter of the countryside. Now Icelanders would like to get some of those forests back, to improve and stabilize the country’s harsh soils, help agriculture and fight climate change. But restoring even a portion of Iceland’s once-vast forests is a slow and seemingly endless task. Despite the planting of three million or more trees in recent years, the amount of land that is covered in forest — estimated at about 1 percent at the turn of the 20th century, when reforestation was made a priority — has barely increased. (Click on title for full story.)

While these anecdotes do not provide direct experimental evidence in support of the psychological benefits of growing plants in space, they do show the affective responses and high level of interest by the astronauts associated with having greenery on board space vessels. (Click on title for full story.)

‘The iconic association of palm trees with Los Angeles is a positive, but we’re now in a period where we have a better understanding of what’s needed,’ says a climate expert. (Click on title for full story.)