I recently visited Tucson, Arizona and was happy to see a fair amount of people riding bicycles rather than driving through the city’s downtown area. There are wide bike lanes and plenty of racks for parking, and even a monthly street fair where bikers can pick up new and used parts or equipment. All this [...]

Featured in my ResearchBlogging.org column this week: First, a fantastic discussion that encompasses our relationship to the environment and the importance of local knowledge: visit Safari Ecology to learn about the importance of the plant Commelina to the Maasai. The hop over to Originus to learn how archaeologists identify dwelling sites in the absence of physical remains. While we’re [...]

One of the most astonishing secrets in biology is this: every plant you see makes two different plants from the same genome. And, scientists recently reported, a single gene from an ancient, powerful lineage can make the difference. How can such a truth be so little known? In most land plants, including conifers and flowering [...]

When an avalanche tears down a mountain, a revealing, if inadvertant, botanical experiment is sometimes begun. Though trees in the path of the angry snow are often ripped from their roots and deposited unceremoniously downhill, occasionally, overturned trees hold fast. Some roots of these partially upturned trees break and die of exposure. But some remain [...]

Mosses, which probably already have an inferiority complex, must feel especially inferior in Sequoia National Park. When you stand in the shadows of giants, how will you ever get noticed? If you are lucky, someone like Lena Coleman will come to your rescue. You may have recently read David Quammen’s wonderful profile of The President, [...]

Southern conifer species have had it easy over the past 65 million years — especially compared to their hard-knock northern kin. Unlike their Southern Hemisphere cousins, whose northward-drifting continents continued to host stable habitats with cozy, Club-Med like conditions similar to those in which these conifers evolved, northern hemisphere conifer species were forced to cope [...]

Last summer I was hiking in the tundra near Gray’s and Torrey’s Peaks when I came upon a moss that looked strange. It had little flattened discs that looked something like this: What were these things? Then I happened to pick up a book called “Gathering Moss“, and suddenly I knew what it was I [...]

It’s Independence Day here in the United States, and in celebration, today I bring you a short post about some flowers that grow nowhere in the wild in America — but beautifully resemble certain patriotic displays that are currently banned nearly everywhere here in Colorado due to extreme fire danger. In desperation, many out here [...]

When we left the volcano Rangitoto two posts ago, I promised more Down Under fern excitement. For the six of you still here, here we go! Toward the beginning of my hike I saw signs pointing to a kidney fern glen or gully. That sounded *extremely* promising, though I’d never heard of a kidney fern [...]

A fern may seem a simple thing. It’s a leaf; it sprouts from the forest floor. But it’s much more than that. Ferns were one of the first plant forms to evolve, and they retain features that show it. For instance, unlike mosses and their wacky buddies the liverworts, ferns possess true stems (which usually [...]

A week and a half ago I stepped off a plane and into the Southern Hemisphere for the first time in my life. In spite of 12 hours of cramped legs and loud children heedless of fellow travelers’ sleep needs, it was an exhilarating feeling. Location: New Zealand. Though David Attenborough ably prepared me for [...]

  In the world of gigantic plant and fungus clones, there is no lack of contenders for the title Oldest, Heaviest, and Most Ginormous. The humongous fungus is a mushroom-producing parasitic fungus called Armillaria bulbosa that spans 635 m, is estimated to weigh 21,000 pounds, and is over 1,500 years old. Pando, (aka “The Trembling [...]

As go the elephants, so go the trees. That’s the message of a new study published in the May 2013 issue of Forest Ecology and Management that found more than a dozen elephant-dependent tree species suffered catastrophic population declines in new plant growths after forest elephants were nearly extirpated from their ecosystems. The fruit-bearing trees [...]

Every year up to two million people visit Haleakalā National Park in Hawaii, the only habitat for the endangered Haleakalā silversword (Argyroxyphium sandwicense macrocephalum), a spectacular and unusual plant that is now threatened by climate change. According to research published January 7 in Global Change Biology, these silverswords have suffered a dramatic population decline in [...]

A fossilized sample of thousand-year-old parrot dung has revealed a previously unknown ecological relationship that could help save a threatened parasitic plant from extinction. Yup, conservation science is sometimes weird. The plant in question is called Dactylanthus taylorii (aka wood rose or Hades flower). A parasitic plant that only grows on the roots of about [...]

Add another species to the long list of plants and animals being eaten out of existence so men can try to get it up in the bedroom. This time, instead of medically useless tiger penises or sea turtle eggs, it’s an African plant called White’s ginger (Mondia whitei ), often wrongly referred to as “white [...]

A rare plant called Paris japonica has a genome 50 times longer than that of humans, making it the longest genome ever recorded. The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, announced the discovery last week, and details appear in the September 2010 issue of the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society. The Paris japonica genome weighs in [...]

Yams are an important food crop in Africa, where the tubers are eaten by 60 million people every day, as well as in other parts of the world. But despite the yam’s importance as a food source, science doesn’t really know that much about yams or exert much effort in conserving them. That needs to [...]

Two years ago, the world’s smallest water lily, a plant known as Nymphaea thermarum whose pads reach only one centimeter in diameter, disappeared from its only habitat, a few square meters near a hot spring in Mashyuza, Rwanda. Local agriculture had drained the spring of most of its water, and as a result, the water [...]

Around the world carnivorous plants are on the decline, the victims of habitat loss, illegal poaching and pollution. But now a new factor has come to light: The very insects the plants rely on for food may be poisoning them. According to new research by Christopher Moody and Iain Green of Bournemouth University in England, [...]

The process of photosynthesis is often described as turning sunlight into sugars, and while that’s broadly true, there are two distinct biochemical reactions taking place. The first uses the sunlight to create energy inside the cell and the second takes carbon dioxide and uses it to make sugars. The second is the Calvin cycle although [...]

For free-living organisms, the ability to sense and respond to the outside environment is crucial for survival. Eukaryotes, such as animals and plants, often have highly complex network systems in place to monitor their surroundings and respond effectively, but bacteria have developed a remarkably simple system. It’s called the ‘Two Component System’ because it literally [...]

The soil is not just a single environment. To human eyes it may look like a brown layer of plant mush that fits into the rocks, but for a living environment it is highly complex. Not only must the bacteria that live within it share their space with small animals, protozoa, and fungi, but they [...]

Unlike animals, plants do not have a circulating blood system containing cell capable of fighting off bacterial invasion. Instead, they have to rely on various other techniques, which I covered in detail way back on my old Field of Science blog. One method they use is to kill off cells that are close to a bacterial or [...]

I have a soft-spot for plant biology. In my final year at university, having exhausted all of the bacteria-related biochemistry lectures, I took a bacteria-related lecture course with the plants department. It was a smaller department, and seemed a lot friendlier and nicer. Also the biscuits in the tea-room were cheaper. So I do like to write about [...]

Still on my honeymoon, far away from any form of internet, so this is another old post from my previous blog. The post itself is not one of the best I’ve written, but the subject matter was so fascinating I feel it needed reposting! This post came to light due to Captain Skellet (whose been around [...]

I while ago I wrote a quick piece exploring the use of algae to produce bacterial-based bioplastics. While this blog tends to focus more on the academic side of research, it’s important to appreciate that in order to gain large-scale importance, research does at some point need to venture out of a purely academic environment [...]

This is a guest post from a member of the iGEM competition team from Imperial College London. They recently won the iGEM regional championships and will be going to Boston in November to compete for the Worldwide Championships. This post describes the work they did over the summer, and how they found the iGEM experience. [...]

Aphids are small insects that are a major pest in crop production. Dealing with these aphid pests often involves the use of pesticides, however growing resistance to these pesticides means that many farmers are now looking to use natural predators such as ladybirds or hoverflies to stop aphids destroying crops. However the problem with natural [...]

The U.S. has spent several billion dollars looking for life on other planets. Shouldn’t we spend at least that much finding and identifying life on Earth? That is the argument behind a taxonomy analysis by a trio of scientists in Science, published on January 25. They argue just $500 million to $1 billion a year [...]

Spring and summer allergy sufferers might already have noticed a slight increase in days spent sneezing each year. And new research suggests that allergies triggered by pollen are set to increase—in both duration and severity—with climate change. The seasonal scourge ragweed has already been expanding its range in North America, thanks in large part to [...]

Photosynthesis is the single most important transformation on Earth. Using the energy in sunlight, all plants—from single-celled algae to towering redwoods—knit carbon dioxide and water into food and release oxygen as a byproduct. Every year, humanity uses up roughly 40 percent of the planet’s photosynthesis for our own purposes—from feeding a growing population to biofuels. [...]

Moss, that cushy, moisture-loving ground cover, is more promiscuous than we thought. These plants might not have the sexy flowers of a peony, but according to new research, they do manage to attract small pollinators with a subtle sweet smell. Previously, scientists had presumed that these primitive plants needed a layer of water for their [...]

You may not give your houseplants enough credit. What looks like an innocent philodendron gathering dust may actually be a riddle wrapped in a mystery shrouded in potting soil…at least genetically. Turns out plants have some interesting genetic quirks that keep geneticists guessing. As challenges in finding gene-sequencing shortcuts, called barcodes, have made clear, deciphering plant [...]

The word “sunflower” brings to mind a mane of vibrant yellow petals encircling a dark whorl of seeds. But not all sunflowers are alike. Some sunflowers have scraggly petals, for instance, or small centers. Many of the sunflowers Vincent Van Gogh depicted in his famous series of oil paintings look rather unusual, sporting wooly, chrysanthemum-like [...]

Plants mastered chemistry a long time before humans, billions of years actually. In fact, we humans and most of the rest of the life on Earth can thank tiny cyanobacteria for mastering/evolving the molecule known as chlorophyll. Chlorophyll—a pigment that absorbs blue light—is the key to photosynthesis, and photosynthesis is the key to turning sunlight [...]

Ancient humans’ lax dental hygiene has been a boon for researchers looking for clues about early diets. Traces of fossilized foodstuffs wedged between Neandertal teeth have revealed plentiful traces of grains and other plants, supporting the theory that these heavy-browed humans were not just meat-eaters. "Many researchers have proposed biologically or technologically mediated dietary differences" [...]

New research shows that plants "can think and remember," according to a news story published this week. Plants can transmit information "from leaf to leaf in a very similar way to our own nervous systems," BBC News wrote. The article continues to assert that plants remember information and use "information encrypted in the light to [...]

Throughout their growth cycle, plants sprout all kinds of intricate and complex structures that range from scarcely apparent to invisible in the seedling stage. Leaves, flowers and seeds can appear, seemingly out of nowhere, from a smooth stem or branch. But the details of how cellular development occurs—why one cell might give rise to petal [...]

Botanically, a tomato is a fruit: a seed-bearing structure that grows from the flowering part of a plant. In 1893, however, the highest court in the land ruled in the case of Nix v. Hedden that the tomato was a vegetable, subject to vegetable import tariffs. Unfortunately, the vegetal confusion did not end in 1893. [...]