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.
- Plants
Let’s learn about photosynthesis
Thank photosynthesis for the existence of all complex life on Earth — including us.
- Plants
On hot summer days, this thistle stays cool to the touch
Its yellow flowers can cool themselves substantially, staying up to 10 degrees C (18 degrees F) cooler in extreme heat.
- Earth
Experiment: Can plants stop soil erosion?
Soil erosion washes pollutants into streams and rivers — but plants may help limit that.
