That small things can have a huge impact comes to no surprise to most modern scientists. After all, invisible (to our naked senses) things make up the universe. Pathogens of both humans and plants have devastated civilizations before we knew what bacteria and viruses even were. Similarly, a lot of small things can interfere with … More Cellular Sand in the Gears
Climate change is a problem humanity is currently causing and facing. Along with the rest of life on Earth, including plants. 2017 was one of the hottest years on record. The arctic is our early warning of a potential future. Policy changes and action on climate are fundamentally selfish – it will maintain the conditions … More Telling stories of plants in a world of unchecked climate change.
Recently, Evolutionary biology PhD candidate and science communicator Sally LePage discovered that 10 of 12 water companies in the UK use divining rods. It was picked up by The Guardian amongst other places. Phantom Sense Divining rods, or dowsing objects, do not work. They are no better than chance and Le Page cites the evidence … More Finding water.
The Google Doodle on July 10 honored Eva Ekeblad’s 293rd birthday. Her story is illustrative of how new foods get adopted and spread, in this case, the potato in Europe. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kUrtGFjKxo Countess Eva Ekeblad, at 22, became a member of The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (founded 1739 and since the late 19th century awarders of … More Eva Ekeblad and Potato Adoption in Europe.
Humans are inspired by nature in all sorts of ways. A substantial part of that natural world is the plants surrounding us. Some common, most rare, and many found medicinally useful to humans. Even some “useless” plants like Arabidopsis, thale cress, a mustard weed, has contributed human health through its place as a research organism. … More The State of The World’s Medicinal Plants
This is a guest post by Kimberly McCoy. If you’ve ever seen a tree trunk frothing like a dog with rabies, don’t worry, it won’t bite. I recently came across a tree that had a white, bubbling liquid oozing slowly from its bark, and no idea what it was. I saw these two oozing river … More Odd Oozing From The Trees
One of the hats I’m wearing these days is as the resources editor for The Annals of Botany. As part of that, for Fascination of Plants Day (FoPD), we are launching Botany Live (#BotanyLive), a global event to celebrate plants starting May 18 and going through the weekend. Live broadcasts of plant scientists talking about plants for … More Botany Live
The professor that got me into plant biology, taught me plant physiology, and in a many ways helped me develop my technical writing ability is retiring this year. Gary Tallman, PhD is retiring from being the Taul Watanabe endowed Professor of Biology at Willamette University in Salem, OR, but has had a long career in … More Guard Cells Tolerating Heat
This is a guest post about a new plant science community resource by Erin Sparks, Guillaume Lobet, Larry York and Frédéric Bouché It is midnight on a cold winter evening and you are scheduled to give a seminar at 8 am the next morning. All you are missing to complete your presentation is one last … More A community repository of plant illustrations
This is a guest post by Arif Ashraf. Arif Ashraf is PhD student at Iwate University, Japan and Graduate Student Ambassador of ASPB. His research interest is understanding the hormonal interplay in primary root development of Arabidopsis. He blogs about plant science at http://www.aribidopsis.blogspot.com Lost Tomato Flavor Tomatoes show up in a lot of our … More Lost Tomato Flavors Regained.
The Quiet Branches 