Category: Plants & People

It’s not that grains crops were much easier to grow than tubers, or that they provided more food, the economists say. Instead, the economists believe that grains crops transformed the politics of the societies that grew them, while tubers held them back. (Click on title for full story.)

Levey also rightly points out that because of its accumulation of thousands of years of experience, Muslim pharmacology may still contain something of value for modern science. The medicinal properties, particularly of botanicals known to Muslim physicians and apothecaries, deserve great attention. Some important medicinal plants prescribed today have been explored with success, and more remains to be done. He believes that clues to valuable drugs can be found in the early Arabic texts (Click on title for full story.)

As part of a larger interdisciplinary chemistry project , my students (aged 14-15) and I decided to do just this: recreate the favourite perfume of Julius Caesar. But how did we even know what it was? Thanks to a fragment of poetry attributed to Caesar (‘Corpusque suavi telino unguimus’, ‘We anoint the body with fragrant telinine ointment’), it is thought to be the unguent telinum. However, finding the recipe is no easy task. (Click on title for full story.)

The Aztecs used a lot of different kinds of sticky plant materials as gums, each of them fitting specific gluing needs. For example, they used gum from the “bat-excrement tree” to attach obsidian blades to war clubs, and acacia gum to mend broken pottery. The gummy roots of tecpatl plants were used to capture birds: the sticky roots (probably mashed up and mixed with water) were spread on the grass or sticks at the birds’ favorite drinking and dining spots, thus ensnaring the unwary birds. Also, different kinds of orchids were used as gums in their gorgeous feather mosaics, copal and pine resins in their beautiful jade and turquoise mosaics, and beeswax here and there. (Click on title for full story.)

The researchers found that women living in areas with the most vegetation had a 34 per cent lower rate of death from respiratory diseases and a 13 per cent lower mortality rate from cancer, compared to people who had the least amount of vegetation around their homes. Overall they had a 12 per cent lower mortality rate. (Click on title for full story.)

Loading up soils with copious amounts of nitrogen fertilizer also has another downside. Faced with an all-you-can-eat buffet, that’s exactly what a plant’s green body sets out to do. They shunt a good deal of the energy they make through photosynthesis to building biomass, shortchanging themselves on the energy they need to make phytochemicals.10 Ramping down phytochemical production depletes a plant’s homemade arsenal and pharmacy, making them as vulnerable as a sick animal within sight of a predator. (Click on title for full story.)

Acacia mearnsii grows quickly and spreads rapidly in our study area. The species can radically change local vegetation structure, such as converting grass-planting area into woodland, or even forest (if there are no control measures) with this single dominant species. In addition, woodland or forest could enhance bird abundance and increase the probability of bird strike events. (Click on title for full story.)

A critical discovery about how bacteria feed on an unusual sugar molecule found in leafy green vegetables could hold the key to explaining how ‘good’ bacteria protect our gut and promote health. (Click on title or image for full story.)

The important thing is it’s not going to kill people’s dogs and cats, it just makes a hell of a mess, (Click on title or image for full story.)