Plants

Plants

Micro Sculptors

Snippets of RNA that control biochemical reactions by squelching the creation of specific proteins play a role in the development of leaves.

Plants

Bean plants punish microbial partners

In a novel test of how partnerships between species can last in nature, researchers have found that soybeans punish cheaters.

Plants

Glitch splits hermaphrodite flowers

In a newly proposed scenario, polyploidy may trigger perfectly good hermaphrodite plants to evolve gender forms.

Plants

Next loosestrife is already loose

A Florida botanist warns against Nymphoides cristata and Rotala rotundifolia, very troublesome escapees from aquariums and water gardens.

Plants

Misunderstood stripes confuse individuality

In the debate over how many fungi make up one lichen body, a researcher argues for two unrelated fungal species in the same lichen.

Plants

Everglades plant is he, then she, then he

Sawgrass, the signature plant of the Everglades, switches genders twice during its week of blooming and thus reduces the chances of self- fertilization.

Plants

Emergency Gardening

High-tech tissue culture is helping some ultrarare plants finally have sprouts of their own.

Plants

Stout Potatoes: Armed with a new gene, spuds fend off blight

Splicing a gene from a blight-resistant wild potato into varieties used for consumption could lead to blight immunity for all spuds.

Plants

Crop genes diffuse in seedy ways

A study of sugar beets in France suggests that genes may escape to wild relatives through seeds accidentally transported by humans rather than through drifting pollen.

Plants

Sun-tracking dads make better pollen

In one of the first tests of paternal behavior in plants, snow buttercups that were allowed to follow their natural tendency to track sun movement made more-viable pollen than did tethered blooms.

Plants

Any Hope for Old Chestnuts?

Next year will mark the 100th anniversary of the discovery of chestnut blight in the United States, but enthusiasts still haven't given up hope of restoring American chestnut forests.

Plants

Team corners culprit in sudden oak death

After 5 years of mystery, California pathologists announced they may have identified the cause of a new tree disease called sudden oak death.