Leonardo da Vinci was wrong about trees. The multitalented, Renaissance genius wrote down his “rule of trees” over 500 years ago. It described the way he thought that trees branch.…
Category: Plants
These flowers lure pollinators to their deaths. There’s a new twist on how
Fake — and fatal — invitations to romance could be the newest bit of trickery uncovered among some jack-in-the-pulpit wildflowers. The fatal part isn’t the surprise. Jack-in-the-pulpits (Arisaema) are the…
Forests help reduce global warming in more ways than one
When it comes to cooling the planet, forests have more than one trick up their trees. Tropical forests help cool the average global temperature by more than 1 degree…
Africa’s 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…
Simple hand-built structures can help streams survive wildfires and drought
Wearing waders and work gloves, three dozen employees from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service stood at a small creek amid the dry sagebrush of southeastern Idaho.…
Invasive grasses are taking over the American West’s sea of sagebrush
No one likes a cheater, especially one that prospers as easily as the grass Bromus tectorum does in the American West. This invasive species is called cheatgrass because it dries…
Rice feeds half the world. Climate change’s droughts and floods put it at risk
Under a midday summer sun in California’s Sacramento Valley, rice farmer Peter Rystrom walks across a dusty, barren plot of land, parched soil crunching beneath each step. In a typical…
Here’s the chemistry behind marijuana’s skunky scent
Scientists have finally sniffed out the molecules behind marijuana’s skunky aroma. The heady bouquet that wafts off of fresh weed is actually a cocktail of hundreds of fragrant compounds. The…
A well-known wildflower turns out to be a secret carnivore
Gleaming, gluey, deathtrap hairs have betrayed the secret identity of a well-known wildflower: It’s a carnivore. A species of false asphodel (Triantha occidentalis) uses enzyme-secreting hairs on its flowering stem…
