Plants
- Animals
Under blanket of ice, lakes teem with life
Life under frozen lakes is vibrant, complex and surprisingly active, new research finds. In fact, some plants and animals can only live under the ice. But with climate change, will that continue?
- Animals
Warm petals may attract chilly bees
Dark-purple violet petals are warmer than a light-purple variant. And and that warmth might explain their attraction to potentially chilly bees.
- Agriculture
Bananas under attack: Understanding their foes
Fungal blights threaten the world’s most popular fruit. But genetic studies hint at new ways to combat some of these diseases.
- Animals
Earthworms: Can these gardeners’ friends actually become foes?
Asian jumping worms can strip leaf litter from floor of U.S. forests, new data show. Many native plants need that leaf litter for their seeds to germinate.
- Plants
Scientists Say: Bromeliad
Bromeliads are plants with long spiky leaves. They are common houseplants, and we even see one in the grocery store — the pineapple.
- Earth
Houseplants suck up air pollutants that can sicken people
Certain indoor air pollutants can sicken people. But some houseplants can remove those chemicals from a room’s air, new data show.
- Plants
Scientists Say: Chlorophyll
Plants can make energy out of sunlight, all thanks to a pigment called chlorophyll.
- Agriculture
Sneaky! Virus sickens plants, but helps them multiply
The cucumber mosaic virus helps tomato plants lure pollinators. When the plants multiply, the virus now gets new hosts.
- Genetics
Young sunflowers keep time
The plants don’t just use light to follow the sun. An internal clock helps their stems bend as the sun moves across the sky.
- Animals
Plants, animals adapt to city living
Cities have turned into experiments in evolution for both plants and animals, from the taste of clover to the stickiness of lizards’ toes.
- Climate
Climate closing the gender gap for this mountain flower
Among valerian plants, males like it hotter than the females do. So a warming climate has been speeding their migration up once-cool mountainsides.
- Chemistry
Identifying ancient trees from their amber
A Swedish teen’s analyses of a sample of amber may have uncovered a previously unknown type of ancient tree.
