From Stressed Plants as Good Neighbors to the Genome of a Parasitic Flowering Plant. And the top five most popular tweets of 2021 at HowPlantsWork are: #5 – How plants become good neighbours in times of stress “So how do plants prevent elongated growth under deep shade conditions? The secret lies in…
From How Roots Provide Symbiotic Bacteria Oxygen to How Flowers Changed the Evolution of Life on Earth. Counting down the top 25 tweets of 2021 from HowPlantsWork, here’s Part 3 – #15 to #11: #15 – How legumes give oxygen to symbiotic bacteria in their roots “The roots of legume…
Welcome Back! After over more than a year-long hiatus from scribbling blog posts, we’re back. Let’s resume by counting down the “top 25 tweets” of 2021 from the HowPlantsWork twitter feed. “What the heck is a top tweet”?, you may ask. As defined by Twitter, it’s a ranking of tweets…
First Signs of Spring? We’re about to switch to the stupid “daylight savings time” here in the Pacific Northwest, and I’m starting to see some daffodils around town…both iconic signs of spring in many parts of the world. The appearance of the daffs motivated me to revisit this post from…
From What Makes Plants Flower To “Sleeping” Trees. The subject of trees seemed to received a lot of attention in the April 2018 plant science news. The stories ranged from what actually constitutes a “tree” to how tree canopies seem to move during the night. Also, new clues to what,…
From Plant Consciousness To A Bug-Eyed View of Flowers. Last February the plant science news ranged from the sedate to the ultraviolet. See, for example, below. Unconscious Plants?: “… a study published recently in Annals of Botany has shown that plants can be frozen in place with a range of…
A sampling of plant science news from 2018. For the past six years, I’ve started out the new year here at the How Plants Work blog by taking a look back at the previous year’s plant-related news from my HPW Twitter feed and sharing a few of the “tastier” tidbits,…
No Plant Says “Christmas” Like…. If there’s a plant most associated with Christmas, then, of course, it’s the Christmas tree. What would be in second place? Did you think poinsettia? If so, I suspect most people would agree with you. If you’re looking for a comprehensive website regarding poinsettias (e.g.,…
When No Really Means No (In Plants) When it comes to sexual reproduction, nearly half of all flowering plant species are self-incompatible. That is, the pollen (male parts of flowers) produced by an individual plant is somehow recognized by the plant and rendered ineffectual in self-fertilizing the ovules (female parts…
A recent story about how some of our Washington state lawmakers hate the sight of dandelions reminded me that it’s time for an encore of this post. Hope you enjoy it….again? Dandelions – Much Maligned. Some people become upset when they see dandelions (please see here, for example). Few plants…