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We've all heard examples of animal altruism: Dogs caring for orphaned kittens, chimps sharing food or dolphins nudging injured mates to the surface. Now, a new study suggests some plants are altruistic, too.
Experts are analyzing 2000-year-old Indian Buddhist documents that have only recently come to light. The precious manuscripts have already yielded some surprising findings.
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Rescooped by
Marybeth Shea
from AnnBot
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The Bank of Canada blundered by using a Norwegian maple leaf instead of the country's native variety on its new banknotes, plant experts have claimed. Atlantic Canada Conservation Data Centre botanist Sean Blaney highlighted the difference between the leaf on new \$20, \$50 and \$100 notes and the North American sugar maple. He said: "It's really hard to deny the image is of a Norway maple." He said the Norway maple has more lobes - or sections - has a more pointed outline than the sugar maple and the lobe that rises in the centre is shorter than the sugar maple's.
Via Annals of Botany: Plant Science Research
Tobacco plants bloom when they are just a few months old -- and then they die. Now, researchers have located a genetic switch which can keep the plants young for years and which permits unbounded growth.
Simple Physics May Limit the Size of Leaves - ScienceNOW
Wolffia, commonly referred to as watermeal and misidentified as duckweed, is officially the world’s smallest flower, with each bloom weighing about as much as two grains of sand. It takes about 5,000 of these teeny-tiny flowers to fill a thimble, and they’re amazingly small when seen against the grooves in a human fingerprint. Woffia sometimes grow in colonies that form a dense-looking mat on sheltered waters. The only way to identify the exact species of a wolffia flower is to view it under a microscope.
Each wolffia flower has a single pistil and stamen and produces the world’s smallest fruit, called a utricle. It has no leaves, stem or roots, floating freely in quiet freshwater lakes and marshes. Woffia is highly nutritious, serving as food for fish and waterfowl in nature and occasionally cultivated for use as livestock feed or even human cuisine. It’s eaten as a vegetable in Burma, Laos and Thailand.
Via Dr. Stefan Gruenwald, Meristemi, Marybeth Shea
One reason to love the internets, back into which, fully refreshed, we plunge, is this comment: [T]he plant Galen mentions is the λυκοπέρσιον, lykopersion, not lykopersikon. The name means ravager or slayer of wolves, like our wolfsbane.
Via Luigi Guarino, Marybeth Shea
Researchers have discovered two new species of Caribbean orchid. The Caribbean islands have been natural laboratories and a source of inspiration for biologists for over two centuries now.
SeedZoo Video:
Introducing Plant Explorer
Joseph Simcox In this video plant explorer Joseph Simcox talks about food biodiversity and how, through the SeedZoo project, gardeners can grow some of the world’s threatened food plants in their gardens. By growing these plants, and sharing seeds with friends and family, Simcox believes gardeners can have a real impact on saving our food plant diversity.
The mysterious inner workings of Chang Shan -- a Chinese herbal medicine used for thousands of years to treat fevers associated with malaria -- have been uncovered thanks to a high-resolution structure solved by scientists.
Large amounts of a substitute for one of the world's most treasured fragrance ingredients -- a substance that also has potential anti-cancer activity -- could be produced with a sustainable new technology, scientists are reporting.
A plant may start to prime its defenses as soon as it gets a whiff of a male fly searching for a mate, according to entomologists.
Steve Leavitt studies one of the world's most common but overlooked symbiotic systems, lichens. Using DNA analysis he explores the hidden world of lichen evolution
Via Ruth Bastow
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Not only is this organism one of the oldest on Earth, it is also a contender for other extreme titles. (RT @m_m_campbell: #SixIncredibleThingsBeforeBreakfast: Clone alone. 80k yr old aspen grove is one clone.
Via Luigi Guarino
For the past week, most of the UK has experienced freezing conditions with widespread ice and snow over the country. It has now been revealed that salting roads with grit salt in icy conditions is ...
Via Luigi Guarino
While the iconic Haleakala silversword plant made a strong recovery from early 20th-century threats, it has now entered a period of substantial climate-related decline.
A London surgeon and amateur naturalist, Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward (1791-1868) stumbled upon a solution one day when he noticed that a bulb he had moved to a glass jar, and then forgotten, was thriving in this little habitat.
Via Luigi Guarino
Some 2,000-year-old tablets found on a shipwreck off the coast of Italy are analysed by scientists.
Rising emissions may double sweet potato size Reuters AlertNet CIP is evaluating the temperature range that sweet potatoes can withstand.
Via Luigi Guarino
(click on pics for closer look) Pages from the First American Lithographically Illustrated Book (note: hyperlink is not the 1822 American edition) “SMITH, JAMES EDWARD. A Grammar of Botany, Illustr...
British and Chinese botanists have discovered several new species of nettles growing in the entrance caverns of caves in 0.04 to 3 percent daylight.
One-Way Journey to the Death Pool - ScienceNOW
Finnish sea captain and amateur botanist Markku Häkkinen has studied wild bananas for nearly 40 years. Now he has found the new species to science.
Via Luigi Guarino
For centuries, humans have been exploring, researching, and discovering how to stave off life-threatening diseases, increase life spans, and obtain immortality. Biologists, doctors, spiritual gurus, and even explorers have pursued these quests.
One of many great projects coming out of UK plant science, highlighted at the UK Plant Sciences Federation 2nd AGM.
Via Ruth Bastow
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