Plants
- Agriculture
How silicon turns tomato plants into mean, green, pest-killing machines
Treated plants fight pests without the need for toxic pesticides, oozing a "larval toffee" that stunts tomato pinworms’ growth and attracts predators.
- Climate
Some trees are coping with extreme heat surprisingly well
Rising temperatures could reduce trees' ability to photosynthesize. Scientists are trying to figure out just how close we are to that point.
- Tech
Robots are gaining new capabilities thanks to plants and fungi
Biohybrid robots made with plant and fungal tissue are more sensitive to their surroundings.
- Plants
A bacteria-based Band-Aid helps plants heal their wounds
Recent research into bacterial cellulose patches may speed plants' recovery, improve grafting and help with preservation.
- Life
A new book explores the evolutionary romance between plants and animals
Riley Black’s new book, When the Earth was Green, uses the latest research to envision the ancient worlds of our favorite prehistoric animals.
- Plants
Meet a scientist tracking cactus poaching in the Atacama Desert
Botanist Pablo Guerrero has been visiting Atacama cacti all his life. They’re not adapting well to a drier climate, booming mining and plant collection.
- Plants
Carnivorous plants eat faster with a fungal friend
Insects stuck in sundew plants’ sticky secretions suffocate and die before being subjected to a medley of digestive enzymes.
- Animals
Bird nests made with a toxic fungus seem to fend off attacking ants
Two species of birds in Costa Rica build nests in trees defended by ants. Ants that encounter the horsehair fungus in the nests develop odd behaviors.
- Plants
Projectile pollen helps this flower edge out reproductive competition
With explosive bursts of pollen, male Hypenea macrantha flowers knock some competitors’ deposits off hummingbird beaks before the birds reach females.
- Plants
This tentacled, parasitic ‘fairy lantern’ plant is new to science
The bizarre new plant from Malaysia parasitizes subterranean fungi and only briefly erupts from the soil to flower.
- Life
The largest known genome belongs to a tiny fern
Though 'Tmesipteris oblanceolata' is just 15 centimeters long, its genome dwarfs humans’ by more than 50 times.
- Plants
Plant ‘time bombs’ highlight how sneaky invasive species can be
Sycamore maples and some other plant invaders lurked for centuries before starting to choke out native ecosystems and species.
