A cosmic mystery is uniting monks and scientists in Japan after a cherry tree grown from a seed that orbited the Earth for eight months bloomed years earlier than expected -- and with very surprising flowers.

Internal communications in plants share striking similarities with those in animals, new research reveals. With the help of tiny insects, scientists were able to tap into this communication system. Their results reveal the importance of these communications in enabling plants to protect themselves from attack by insect pests.

Ernesto Gianoli wasn’t the first person to work out his frustrations with a walk in the woods, but the motivation behind that walk—and its results—were certainly unusual.

Scientists have discovered a new plant species with an unusual lifestyle - it eats nickel for a living - accumulating up to 18,000 ppm of the metal in its leaves without itself being poisoned, says the lead author of a new report. Such an amount is a hundred to a thousand times higher than in most other plants.

Some weeds can grow without invading native plants.

Once-in-a-lifetime blooms on an 80-year-old American agave plant at the University of Michigan's Matthaei Botanical Gardens have yet to open, but anticipation for the big event has drawn huge crowds to the Ann Arbor gardens.

VEGETARIANS, get off your moral high-horses. It turns out that plants can hear themselves being eaten.

An American agave plant housed at the University of Michigan since 1934 started to bloom Tuesday afternoon. The blooms so far are "low-key" with yellow anthers sticking out, Joe Mooney, a spokesman for Matthaei Botanical Gardens, said Wednesday. The anther is the part of the stamen where pollen is produced.

A flowering process 80 years in the making is finally underway. An American agave plant housed at the University of Michigan since 1934 started to bloom Tuesday afternoon. The blooms so far are "low-key" with yellow anthers sticking out, Joe Mooney, a spokesman for Matthaei Botanical Gardens, said Wednesday. The anther is the part of the stamen where pollen is produced.

Better grab your calamine lotion. More CO2 means bigger poison ivy plants.

Antioxidant vitamins don’t stress us like plants do—and don’t have their beneficial effect.

Not all species flee rising temperatures. As the mercury has inched upward across western North America over the last 40 years, many plant species have moved downhill, toward—not away from—warmer climates, according to the results of a new study. The finding adds to growing evidence that temperature isn’t the only factor influencing how Earth’s life will respond to climate change.

People tend to be fixated upon the question of whether talking to your plants stimulates them to grow, but scientists have known for several decades that various plant species talk among themselves — not with words, but by releasing chemical signals into the air that warn other trees about impending insect attacks. Most of the nearly 50 studies on the subject have found evidence of plant communication.

Offices devoid of pictures, souvenirs or any other distractions are "the most toxic space" you can put a human into, say psychologists in a paper published on Monday, which says workers perform better when household plants are added to workplaces.

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Nature always sparkles when it rains. The light reflects of the round rain drops and the water magnifies the features of the leaves and petals, bringing out the colours and micro details. All these photos were taken in and around our garden and the meadow by the Utuhina Stream In Rotorua, New Zealand

One of the stranger aspects of the modern human-pet relationship is that many cat owners recreationally dose their pets with a psychoactive drug. I'm talking, of course, about catnip. Catnip is a bizarre phenomenon for a few reasons. It's the only recreational drug we routinely give to animals, and though it basically makes them freak out — rolling on the ground, drooling, and mashing their face into wherever the catnip was sprinkled — it has essentially no effect on us.

Even Armageddon can have a silver lining, according to a new discovery about what followed the massive meteor impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. Around 66 million years ago, a 10-kilometre wide asteroid or comet smashed into the Earth off Mexico's Yucatan peninsular, producing a crater 150 kilometres across.

I've never stopped to think about how we might grow plants in space. I've only really thought about those enormous geodesic domes that you see in sci-fi films like Silent Running, but I've never...

The magic world of macro from our garden, rain and flowers look fascinating close up.

Eating a leaf off a plant may not kill it, but that doesn't mean the plant likes it. The newest study to examine the intelligence (or at least behavior) of plants finds that plants can tell when they're being eaten - and send out defenses to stop it from happening.

Millions and millions of years ago, the world was full of strange looking trees. Now, one of these tree species has dwindled to a single male plant who is desperately in need of a mate.

Vegetarians and vegans pay heed, new research shows plants know when they’re being eaten. And they don’t like it. That plants possess an intelligence is not new knowledge, but according to Modern Farmer, a new study from the University of Missouri shows plants can sense when they are being eaten and send out defense mechanisms to try and stop it from happening.

The theft of endangered and rare flowers has led botanical gardens to go to extreme measures to protect their plants, locking them down with cables and installing CCTV. But is this enough to preserve such species?

A gardener died after apparently coming into contact with Aconitum, a poisonous plant known as Devil's Helmet

Roses are beautiful flowers, That come in bright colours and look great in any garden, Roses love coffee dregs from coffee machines, These roses are from my and our neighbours garden, most are floribundas, the fourth one is a rock rose, same Rosa family but different species

Dozens of rock art sites in southern New Mexico, recently documented for the first time, are revealing unexpected botanical clues that archaeologists say may help unlock the meaning of the ancient abstract paintings.

The excruciating irritation of going through airport security could one day be as pleasant as walking through a garden. A genetically engineered garden, perhaps, but a garden nonetheless.

Monarch butterflies are vanishing. Over the last 20 years, fewer and fewer of them have been making the long journey down to Mexico to survive the winter. By one count, their numbers have shrunk as much as 90 percent.

In his 1879 account of wanderings in the Orient, the travel writer James Hingston describes how, in West Java, he was treated to a bizarre experience: I am taken by my kind host around his garden, and…

by John N. Jensen

By Thomas Blanchard.

Like every other trait on every other living thing, a clover's lucky fourth leaf sprouts from DNA. But understanding the clover genome won't necessarily help you find one.

What is the first food that comes to mind when you hear "foraged"? My guess is that a mushroom came to mind. While it's true that most mushrooms are grown in the wild, there's an abundance of other wild plant foods that are much easier to find and identify. Just because these wild plants are out there, does that mean we should eat them? My colleagues and I of Berkeley Open Source Food (BOSF) are arguing yes.