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…
Category: Plants
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…
Fynbos plants hold their ground with the world’s thinnest roots
Some plant roots draw a line in the sand — literally. In South Africa, you can move between cool, green forest and sunbaked shrubland in a single stride. These narrow…
Earth may have 9,200 more tree species than previously thought
Trillions of trees are growing on Earth, though how many kinds there are has been underestimated, a new study finds. Earth hosts roughly 64,100 known tree species. But there could…
