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 […]
botany
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, […]
Science Art: Picea excelsa, Walter Mueller, 1886.
Click to embiggen A spruce tree, for the second day of Christmas. From Dr. Prof. Thomé’s Flora von Deutschland, Oesterreich und der Schweiz, in Wort […]
Science Art: Nutmeg Tree, from 40 drawings of plants at Bencoolen, Sumatra, c.1824.
Click to embiggen Spice. In watercolor. It looks like it would smell delicious. From 40 Drawings of Plants at Bencoolen, Sumatra, a collection of natural […]
Coffee (and pepper) of the dinosaurs discovered.
Discovery News hypes the headline a little here (but forgivably) by declaring that a 45-million-year-old prehistoric coffee has been discovered preserved in amber: Named Strychnos […]
A bionic rose, for electronic lovers – growing circuitry inside.
Nature reports on the creation of a rose implanted with electronic circuits: Researchers at Linköping University have created bionic roses by incorporating plant-compatible electronic materials […]
If you’re looking at a plant in a museum, there’s a better than 50% chance it’s named wrong.
Motherboard checks out the state of our nomenclature, and the findings are not good: n a study published on Monday in the journal Current Biology, […]
Italian police pressure scientists investigating olive blight.
Nature uncovers just how hard it can be to do research when your subjects keep dying: In the past year, plant scientists at various institutes […]
Wood chips (of the computer variety).
Science Daily peers into the smoke clouds to see the truth behind biodegradable computer chips make from wood: Portable electronics — typically made of non-renewable, […]