Plants

More Stories in Plants

  1. Plants

    Plant and fungi parts help robots level up

    Fusing machines with plants and fungi isn’t just sci-fi. A new generation of biohybrid devices could someday help in agriculture or energy production.

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  2. 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.

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  3. Climate

    Trees may be even bigger climate heroes than we thought

    These plants absorb methane, a potent greenhouse gas, in addition to carbon dioxide. Methane’s uptake is likely thanks to microbes living in tree bark.

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  4. Plants

    Catapulting pollen helps this flower beat out its rivals

    With explosive blasts of pollen, male Hypenia macrantha flowers remove rival pollen from hummingbird beaks before the birds reach female flowers.

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  5. 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.

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  6. 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.

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  7. 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.

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  8. 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.

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  9. 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.

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