What’s New About How Plants Work? – Some “Tasty Tidbits” from 2012 (Ninth Course)

55118619 b3cf9d969cNumber 9, Number 9, Number 9…

It seems that a common theme in the plant news for September 2012 was the effects of global “weirding” on plants.

This may explain the first three items on today’s ninth plate of “tasty tidbits”.

We do, however, have two “dessert” items today.

  • Gardeners and landscapers may want to rethink their spring plantings. Have warming temperatures made the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s cold-weather planting guidelines obsolete?
    Do warmer temperatures make the USDA Plant Zone Map obsolete?
  • This article is about a paper published online in the 9 September 2012 issue of Nature Climate Change that attempted to lay out just how climate stress affects forests, and how serious the consequences of could be.
    Climate change stress killing forests, and why it matters.
  • According to an international team of plant biologists, fungi found in plants will likely NOT be the answer to mitigating climate change by storing additional carbon in soils as some previously thought.
    Plants’ fungal allies may not help store climate change’s extra carbon.
  • The first “dessert” item has to do with ancient vascular plants known as lycopods, along with members of a relic fern group dating to the dinosaur age. It’s a great story about a grad student at UC Berkely who’s a self-described prehistoric-plant geek.
    Primitive-plant uber-geek’s heart belongs to lycopods.

  • And now for special video treat:
    Carnivorous plant catapults prey with snap-tentacles.

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