Plants
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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.
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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.
By Susan Milius -
Plants
Glitch splits hermaphrodite flowers
In a newly proposed scenario, polyploidy may trigger perfectly good hermaphrodite plants to evolve gender forms.
By Susan Milius -
Plants
Next loosestrife is already loose
A Florida botanist warns against Nymphoides cristata and Rotala rotundifolia, very troublesome escapees from aquariums and water gardens.
By Susan Milius -
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.
By Susan Milius -
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.
By Susan Milius -
Plants
Emergency Gardening
High-tech tissue culture is helping some ultrarare plants finally have sprouts of their own.
By Susan Milius -
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.
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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.
By Susan Milius -
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.
By Susan Milius -
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.
By Susan Milius -
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.
By Susan Milius