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+2 +1
Through gardens, these Native communities are cultivating a solution to climate change
How a small home garden can preserve traditional food-growing practices.
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+36 +4
How plants communicate with each other when in danger
The study marks the first time researchers have been able to “visualize plant-to-plant communication,” the senior author of the study said.
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+43 +3
Plan to save world's only wild macadamia trees from extinction
Given the lack of genetic diversity in the farmed crop, the race is on to preserve wild macadamia trees to improve traits like disease resistance, size and climate adaptability.
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+49 +9
The humble spotted gum is a world class urban tree. Here's why
Tall. Straight. Abundant flowers. And a stunning trunk. What’s not to like about the spotted gum?
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+25 +3
Floral Time Travel: Flowers Were More Diverse 100 Million Years Ago Than They Are Today
Angiosperm flowers reached their greatest morphological diversity early in their evolutionary history
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+46 +9
We thought we’d find 200 species living in our house and yard. We were very wrong
An ecologist, a mathematician and a taxonomist were locked down together in a suburban house. So they counted all the species of plants and animals they could find.
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+25 +2
Turns Out There's One Animal Powerful Enough to Mess With Lions' Feeding Habits
In a stark example of how everything on our living planet is interconnected, one species of tiny, invasive insects has reduced lions' abilities to feast on zebras.
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+23 +1
Glow way! Bioluminescent houseplant hits US market for first time
Engineered petunia emits a continuous green glow thanks to genes from a light-up mushroom.
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+11 +2
The TomTato: Plant which produces both potatoes and tomatoes launched in UK
A plant which produces both potatoes and tomatoes, described as a “veg plot in a pot”, has been launched in the UK. The TomTato can grow more than 500 sweet cherry tomatoes while producing white potatoes.
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+20 +1
Do Bean Plants Show Intelligence?
Last week, in our World Changers Issue, Michael Pollan wrote about the growing field of plant neurobiology and the ways that plants seem to exhibit intelligence, intention, and even choice. Pollan explains that our perception of plant intelligence is hindered by our own sense of time, and that “time-lapse photography is perhaps the best tool we have to bridge the chasm between the time scale at which plants live and our own.”
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+14 +2
Genetic discovery points the way to much bigger yields in tomato, other flowering food plants
CSHL researchers announced that they have determined a way to accomplish this. Their research has revealed one genetic mechanism for hybrid vigor, a property of plant breeding that has been exploited to boost yield since the early 20th century. Teasing out the hidden subtleties of a type of hybrid vigor involving just one gene has provided the scientists with means to tweak the length of time that bushy tomato varieties can produce flowers. Longer flowering time substantially raises fruit yield.
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+16 +2
Amber Fossil Shows Ancient Reproduction in Flowering Plant
Researchers have stumbled across a 100-million-year old piece of amber, perfectly preserving flowering plant life from the Cretaceous Period. Encased within amber surroundings, a cluster of 18 sm...
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+21 +1
Oldest evidence of sex in flowering plants
The oldest evidence of sexual reproduction in a flowering plant - dating back 100 million years - has been found in Burma. The team discovered a cluster of 18 tiny flowers in a piece of amber; one of them was in the process of making new seeds for the next generation.
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+23 +1
New evidence that plants get their energy using quantum entanglement
Biophysicists theorize that plants tap into the eerie world of quantum entanglement during photosynthesis. But the evidence to date has been purely circumstantial. Now, scientists have discovered a feature of plants that cannot be explained by classical physics alone — but which quantum mechanics answers quite nicely.
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+19 +1
Suspicious Virus Makes Rare Cross-Kingdom Leap From Plants to Honeybees
When HIV jumped from chimpanzees to humans sometime in the early 1900s, it crossed a gulf spanning several million years of evolution. But tobacco ringspot virus, scientists announced last week, has made a jump that defies credulity. It has crossed a yawning chasm ~1.6 billion years wide.
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+16 +2
Tobacco plant has key to fighting cancer
La Trobe University research has revealed a tobacco plant’s natural defence mechanisms could be harnessed to kill cancer cells in the human body. Scientists at the La Trobe Institute for Molecular Science have identified that a molecule occurring in the flower of the plant that fights off fungi and bacteria also has the ability to identify and destroy cancer.
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+29 +2
Thousands of sheep in Australia die from ‘banging their heads till they crack open’ after eating poisonous plant
Thousands of sheep in Australia are believed to have died after eating a poisonous plant that makes them “bash their heads on posts and rocks until they crack open”. The usually-rare toxic plant, misleadingly named the “Darling pea”, has spread rapidly in the aftermath of bushfires in New South Wales – which themselves caused devastation for sheep farmers in the area.
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+17 +1
Not all weeds are bad for environment
Some weeds can grow without invading native plants.
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+19 +1
The Amazing Micro-Engineered, Water-Repelling Surface That Lives Outside My Window
I was heading out from home to get lunch, when I caught a glint of light out of the corner of my eye. I saw what looked like tiny drops of mercury, sitting on the leaves of a plant in my backyard. How the ultra-microscopic wax needles on a leaf's surface are the secret to its amazing water-repelling powers.
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+20 +1
US sets up honey bee task force
The White House has set up a taskforce to tackle the decline of honey bees.
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