Category: Plants & People
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Buildings That "Green" Themselves (just add water)
They seek to produce a ceramic material that promotes plant growth on its surface whilst conserving a balance with the technical characteristics necessary for use in urban architectural applications.
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What Makes "Great" Plant Hunters Great
More than 50% of the world's plant species have been discovered by 2% of plant collectors, scientists have found.
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Unforeseen Consequences of Human Noise: Plants Can’t Reproduce
A US team found that industrial noise disrupted the behaviour of animals that pollinate plants and disperse seeds. This, they suggest, could be slowly transforming our landscape, especially by changing the dispersal of slow-growing trees.
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Old Cultures Point The Way To The Ecological Future
Humans are frequently blamed for deforestation and the destruction of environments, yet there are also examples of peoples and cultures around the world that have learned to manage and conserve the precious resources around them.
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Silent forests and famine in east Africa
Deforestation and replacing indigenous woodland with exotic trees has had a catastophic effect on climate change
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Orchids Don’t Flower At Night… Do They?
The only orchid among 25,000 species, which flowers for only one night, is found near Papua New Guinea
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Why Use Ipe When You Can Have Black Locust?
Michael Van Valkenburgh, FASLA, and his fellow speakers got multiple rounds of spontaneous applause at the 2011 ASLA annual meeting for hosting a session on a topic near and dear to many design professionals and wood experts: how to end the unsustainable harvesting of Ipe wood and scale up the use of sustainable alternatives. The real alternative may be […]
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Curiosity (nearly) killed the botanist
The American species, by association with this European one, immediately acquired a reputation for being toxic. But this property has never been conclusively demonstrated by physiologists. To my satisfaction, however, an experiment conducted by the Vermont gardener, Alice Bacon, on herself in 1903 leaves little doubt on this issue.
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Too Much Time Indoors Breeds Nearsighted Kids
If you needed another reason to pry your kids away from the TV and video games: More time outdoors may reduce their risk of nearsightedness, according to a new analysis of previous studies.
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Trees That Make Farms More Productive
Planting trees that improve soil quality can help boost crop yields for African farmers, an assessment shows. Fertilizer tree systems (FTS) also help boost food security and play a role in “climate proofing” the region's arable land.