Category: Plant Stress
HPW Retrospectacles 2018 – November
HPW Retrospectacle 2018 – September
From Trees That “Bleed” Metals To Visualizing Danger Signals In Plants. There was lots of unusual plant science news last September, from trees that apparently accumulate certain heavy metals, such as nickel, to plants that glow in the dark when wounded. Added to these September 2018 stories are reports ranging…
Dandelion Time….Again
The Selfish Plant 2 – “Self” & “Non-Self” Perception: Plant-Microbe Interactions
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” – Sun Tzu, The Art of War Who Are You? How do plants distinguish “unfriendly” (a.k.a., pathogenic) microbes from “friendly” microbes (with which to form mutually beneficial partnerships, e.g.)? How do flowering…
2016 “How Plants Work” News Highlights – October
From Flowers That Smell Like Stressed Bees To Corn That Smells Like “Help Me!” October 2016 seemed to feature an unusual number of quirky plant news stories. For example, we previously saw an orchid that smelled like body odor, presumably to attract mosquitos. Now here’s another weird flower smell… “A…
2016 “How Plants Work” News Highlights – September
From Plant Secrets To Plant Antibiotics What were the five most re-tweeted and favorited plant news stories that I shared in September of last year? Well, here they are, in order of popularity, lowest to highest. “Scientists from the John Innes Centre have pioneered innovative new cell imaging techniques to…
2016 “How Plants Work” News Highlights – February
Are Plants Comfortably Numb? – Part Two
numb (adjective): “devoid of sensation; insensible” Pain in the Ash? In the previous post, I posed the question whether or not plants experienced something analogous to pain when physically wounded. I concluded that they did….depending on how one defines “pain”. At the present time, when even academic biologists are expanding…
Will Frenzied Plant Growth Mitigate Global Warming?
Out-Of-Control Plants? A couple of reports in the science news a few years ago seemed to suggest that one way to cope with global climate change may be unbridled plant growth. One such report involved the discovery of a cellular regulator for the synthesis of cellulose by plant cells. The…
HPW Retrospectacles 2018 – November
HPW Retrospectacle 2018 – September

From Trees That “Bleed” Metals To Visualizing Danger Signals In Plants. There was lots of unusual plant science news last September, from trees that apparently accumulate certain heavy metals, such as nickel, to plants that glow in the dark when wounded. Added to these September 2018 stories are reports ranging…
Dandelion Time….Again
The Selfish Plant 2 – “Self” & “Non-Self” Perception: Plant-Microbe Interactions

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” – Sun Tzu, The Art of War Who Are You? How do plants distinguish “unfriendly” (a.k.a., pathogenic) microbes from “friendly” microbes (with which to form mutually beneficial partnerships, e.g.)? How do flowering…
2016 “How Plants Work” News Highlights – October

From Flowers That Smell Like Stressed Bees To Corn That Smells Like “Help Me!” October 2016 seemed to feature an unusual number of quirky plant news stories. For example, we previously saw an orchid that smelled like body odor, presumably to attract mosquitos. Now here’s another weird flower smell… “A…
2016 “How Plants Work” News Highlights – September

From Plant Secrets To Plant Antibiotics What were the five most re-tweeted and favorited plant news stories that I shared in September of last year? Well, here they are, in order of popularity, lowest to highest. “Scientists from the John Innes Centre have pioneered innovative new cell imaging techniques to…
2016 “How Plants Work” News Highlights – February
Are Plants Comfortably Numb? – Part Two

numb (adjective): “devoid of sensation; insensible” Pain in the Ash? In the previous post, I posed the question whether or not plants experienced something analogous to pain when physically wounded. I concluded that they did….depending on how one defines “pain”. At the present time, when even academic biologists are expanding…
Will Frenzied Plant Growth Mitigate Global Warming?
Out-Of-Control Plants? A couple of reports in the science news a few years ago seemed to suggest that one way to cope with global climate change may be unbridled plant growth. One such report involved the discovery of a cellular regulator for the synthesis of cellulose by plant cells. The…