Plants
- Plants
Drought-tolerant plant mined for survival genes
A drought-resistant South African plant is revealing its genetic secrets.
- Plants
Underground Hijinks: Thieving plants hack into biggest fungal network
For the first time, plants have been caught tapping into the most widespread of soil fungi networks and using it to steal food from green plants.
- Plants
Fungus of the Month
Wisconsin botanist Tom Volk’s smorgasbord of a mycology Web site offers a variety of enticing distractions. You can find morel mushrooms dressed in their holiday best, fungi that ought to be avoided at a Thanksgiving feast, and much more. Be sure to check out the fungus of the month, then browse the archive of fungal […]
- Plants
The Wood Detective
Alex Wiedenhoeft belongs to the elite profession of wood identifier, the person to call when a crime investigator, museum curator, archaeologist, or patent attorney with an unusual client really needs to know what that splinter really is.
- Plants
Time Capsules: Seeds sprout 120 years after going underground
An experiment designed by a botany professor to last longer than his own life has demonstrated that seeds of two common flowers still sprout and blossom despite more than a century in a bottle.
- Plants
Sunflower genes don’t fit pattern
Comparison between crop and wild sunflower genes suggests that the plant followed an easy route to domestication.
- Plants
Why tulips can’t dance
An elliptical stem gives daffodils an unusual liveliness in the wind compared with tulips.
- Plants
Recent tree scourge poses garden threat
Lab tests suggest that a lethal disease of oak trees in California and Oregon could strike some popular garden shrubs in the rhododendron family.
- Plants
Disease outpacing control in largest chestnut patch left
An unusual test of a biological control for the blight that's killing American chestnuts doesn't look good in the largest remaining patch.
- Plants
Bleeding Trees: Microbial suspect named in beech deaths
A microbe related to the one that caused the Irish potato famine may be killing majestic old beech trees in the northeastern United States.
- Plants
Mirror Image: Flowers with opposite styles have a fling
Scientists have discovered a gene that controls whether flowers lean to the left or the right.
- Plants
Trees dim the light on spring flowers
Early spring flowers and the sugar maples they grow under use different alarm clocks to get going in the spring, which can make life hard for the flowers in northern forests.
