UW Study Reveals How Climate Change May Reshape Wildflower Communities
A new study from the University of Washington shows that with a changing climate, Mount Rainier floral communities could ‘reassemble’ with new species relationships and…
Plants News
MIT Develops Nanobionic Plants That Can Detect Explosives
By embedding spinach leaves with carbon nanotubes, engineers transformed spinach plants into sensors that can detect explosives and wirelessly relay that information to a handheld…
Scientists Reveal Chemical Code for Nitrogen Fixation
A team of scientists from Yale University reveal part of the chemical code that allows nature to transform nitrogen from the air into usable nitrogen…
Harvard Examines the Response to Light and Temperature Shifts in Northeastern Forests
Biologists from Harvard University are examining whether the earlier arrival of warm weather will clash with genetic programming of plants. Harvard scientists are taking a…
Scientists Discover a New Source of Greenhouse Gases
Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry reveal that lichens, mosses and cyanobacteria produce large amounts of nitrous oxide. Inconspicuous creatures surprise with a…
New Research Shows Plants May Use “Language” to Communicate
New research from Virginia Tech reveals that plants may use a newly discovered molecular language to communicate with each other, opening the door to a…
Pitcher Plant’s Ingenious Way of Trapping Ants
The carnivorous pitcher plant lures insects to their doom with drops of nectar. South American pitcher plants have developed an ingenious insect-trapping mechanism to keep…
An Invasive Grass Species Spreads Wildfires Quicker
New research indicates that an invasive species of grass is making wildfires in the western USA larger, hotter, and more frequent. A variety of grasses…
Roots Show Similar Growth Patterns in Space
Long periods in space can be detrimental to human biology, but it wasn’t exactly known how the lack of gravity affected plants. A new study…
Inherent Complexity of the Wheat Genome
An international team has produced a rough draft of wheat’s DNA sequence. The draft identifies many of its genes and makes it possible to identify…
High Levels of Anthocyanins Give Black Dahlias Their Color
There are more than 20,000 varieties of dahlias, including white, yellow, deep reds, and magenta-colored flowers. The rarer black dahlias are especially alluring to horticulturists….
African Fruit Gets Iridescent Hue From Cell Structure, Stays Intense for Years
The fruits of Pollia condensata, which are found predominantly in Africa, have an iridescent hue that stays intense for years after the parent plant has…
Microstructures of Plants May Lead to New Bio-Inspired Materials
MIT researchers believe engineers may be able design new bio-inspired materials by compiling and analyzing data on the microstructures of a number of different plants….
Low Oxygen Levels Trigger the Formation of Plant Sex Cells
Using a simple approach, a team of scientists at Stanford University demonstrated that low oxygen levels deep inside the developing flowers are all that is…
Plants Choose and Make Use of the Bacteria They Allow into Their Roots
Newly published research from scientists at Max Planck Institute suggests that plants choose to allow certain species of bacteria access to the roots, providing the…
Hybridization Leads to New Pathogen Species
A newly published study from scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg and Aarhus University in Denmark shows that new fungi,…
Climate Change Affects Australian Shrub
While some mass media outlets are dismissing the obvious global climate change, nature isn’t. The hopbush (Dodonaea viscosa), the subspecies angustissima in South Australia, has…
Biochemical Systems That Modulate the Levels of Plant Hormones
An international team of scientists has begun to put a molecular face on the biochemical systems that modulate the levels of plant hormones to defend…
