Plants
Explainer: How to identify tree species in the winter
No leaves to be found? Then buds, bark and branches might help you ID what tree you see.
Plants
More Stories in Plants
- Plants
Are plants intelligent? It seems to depend on how you define it
Plants can do a lot of the same things animals do: communicate, learn — even remember. Now scientists want to know if that means they’re intelligent.
- Plants
Insect-eating plants digest faster with a fungal friend
Insects stuck in sundews’ sticky goo break down faster when the plants host an enzyme-making fungus.
- Climate
An ancient log shows how burying wood can fight climate change
A blanket of clay soil helped the wood hold onto the carbon it had absorbed — for thousands of years.
- Plants
Explainer: How a seed grows into a plant
Plants use carbon from the air to make food and build shoots, roots and more. They adapt and respond to their environments in many incredible ways.
- Plants
Many flowers and ferns lure in ants as bodyguards
With an offer of a nectar meal, ferns and flowering plants have been bribing ants to fend off predatory insects — since before the rise of T. rex.
- Plants
This squid-like ‘fairy lantern’ plant is new to science
A newly named species of fairy lantern — a parasitic plant — sports tentacles and grows among leaf litter and rotten logs in Malaysian rainforests.
- Climate
Microbes in the Arctic may be releasing more climate-warming gases
Mini greenhouses in the wild show how the tiny organisms lurking underground in a ‘sleepy biome’ could play a big role in climate change.
- Plants
Gene editing may help rice better withstand climate change
Three genes may limit the ability of rice to handle dry or salty conditions. A Regeneron ISEF finalist shows that CRISPR could target and change them.
- Plants
Flowers may electrically detect bees buzzing nearby
The discovery may reveal how plants time nectar production and share information with neighboring blooms.
