Science Art: Gradus Peas, Petoskey or Paul Rose Musk Melon, 1899
Click to embiggen From the D.M. Ferry & Co. Seed Annual, via the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Fresh vegetables, fresh muskmelon. Mmm. I do love a […]
botany
Yes, indigenous South Americans were actively managing the forest.
Scientific American looks at old trees to determine how so-called hunter-gatherers were actually actively “farming” the Brazil nuts and cocoa trees they relied on for […]
Science Art: Plate 7: Sweetbread, Horn of Plenty, Puffball, Chanterelle, from Edible and Poisonous Mushrooms, 1894.
Click to embiggen vastly. Mushrooms you can trust. I think. From the Biodiversity Heritage Library’s Flickr collection “Edible and poisonous mushrooms: what to eat and […]
Science Art: Plate XIV (Cosmarium species from Desmids of the United States….
Single-celled algae, magnified 500 times. They float in ponds and stream banks. I found them in the Biodiversity Heritage Library, in the Rev. Francis Wolle’s […]
Science Art: Helicodiceros crinitus Schott by J. Strohmayer / Anstalt v. Reiffenstein & Rösch in Wein.
Click to embiggen An image of an arum, from the Biodiversity Heritage Library’s Aroideae, 1 album, consisting of plates from Heinrich Wilhelm Schott’s Aroideae. The […]
Genetically-altered houseplants clear indoor air.
Science Daily reveals an environmentally friendly GMO – a new variety of pothos ivy that University of Washington researchers designed to remove chloroform and benzene […]
SONG: Upside Down
SONG: “Upside Down” [Download] . ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Nature, 12 June 2018, “Africa’s majestic baobab trees are mysteriously dying”, as used in the post “The […]
The baobabs are dying.
No, this isn’t a heart-wrenching sequel to The Little Prince. It’s a report in Nature on a baffling illness striking down some of Africa’s most […]
Science Art: Tab X from Ueber den Pollen by Carl Julius Fritzsche, 1837.
Where plants come from. (And hay fever.) These are as seen through a pretty powerful microscope – magnified 500 times – and drawn by a […]
Sigh. Maybe a sweet potato *doesn’t* mean that prehistoric Polynesians visited South America after all.
The Guardian has some sweet potato evolutionary research that unintentionally drives a wedge in the idea that the presence of the humble yam in both […]
Science Art: De XII Afbeelding (Banana) by Maria Sibylla Merian
Click to embiggen At the end of the 17th century, this was some weird and wild stuff – a fruit that in the Americas, they […]
Tomato plants can defend themselves – by turning caterpillars into cannibals.
Nature is decidedly unappetizing in its discussion of how vegetables turn attackers against each other: Integrative biologist John Orrock and his colleagues at the University […]
Very old oak; pretty young genes.
Nature examines a tree that was alive in the time of Napoleon, yet has DNA that’s remarkably free of the usual damage of aging: Each […]
Science Art: Medlar, Poppy Anenome, Pear by Hoefnagel and Bocskay, 1561-2.
Wildflower and fruit, from two 16th-century Europeans. More specifically: Medlar, Poppy Anenome, Pear ( 1561 – 1562 ). Watercolour, gold and silver paint, and ink […]
Science Art: Lychee, from Flora Sinensis, 1656.
This is Litchi chinensis, 荔枝, the lychee, sometimes called a “lychee nut” although it’s not nut-like at all. It’s more like a muscadine (tough skin, […]