High in the forest canopy, a mass of strange ferns grips a tree trunk, looking like a giant tangle of floppy, viridescent antlers. Below these fork-leaved fronds and closer into…
Category: Plants
‘Tree farts’ contribute about a fifth of greenhouse gases from ghost forests
If a tree farts in the forest, does it make a sound? No, but it does add a smidge of greenhouse gas to the atmosphere. Gases released by dead trees…
Catnip repels insects. Scientists may have finally found out how
A whiff of catnip can make mosquitoes buzz off, and now researchers know why. The active component of catnip (Nepeta cataria) repels insects by triggering a chemical receptor that spurs…
Modified genes can distort wild cotton’s interactions with insects
Cotton plants native to Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula may all look the same — unkempt and untamed bushes with flowers that shift from pale yellow to violet as pollinators visit them.…
A reeking, parasitic plant lost its body and much of its genetic blueprint
For most of their lives, plants in the Sapria genus are barely anything — thin ribbons of parasitic cells winding inside vines in Southeast Asian rainforests. They become visible only…
A robot arm toting a Venus flytrap can grab delicate objects
A new robotic grabber is ripped straight from the plant world. The device, made with a severed piece of a Venus flytrap, can grasp tiny, delicate objects, researchers report January…
Rats with poisonous hairdos live surprisingly sociable private lives
Crested rats don’t just chew tree bark that’s poisonous enough to kill an elephant. The rabbit-sized rodents dribble and lick the toxic drool into their long rat fluff for a…
These plants seem like they’re trying to hide from people
Fritillaria plants should be simple to spot. The usually bright green plants often stand alone amid the jumbled scree that tops the Himalayan and Hengduan mountains in southwestern China —…
Farming on Mars will be a lot harder than ‘The Martian’ made it seem
In the film The Martian, astronaut Mark Watney (played by Matt Damon) survives being stranded on the Red Planet by farming potatoes in Martian dirt fertilized with feces. Future Mars…
How passion, luck and sweat saved some of North America’s rarest plants
No plant should have to end this way. North America’s various beach plums bear purple-blue, cherry-sized fruits that make for a beloved New England jelly. The small trees’ tolerance for…
