From Explaining Terroir to Hacking Photosynthesis Looking back at the plant news from March 2015, I noticed a couple of recurring themes: how environmental microbes affect plants and how plants affect the environment. Perhaps the most intriguing report was how soil microbes may be a significant factor in determining a…
From Flower Fireworks to Giant Single-Celled Plants Perusing the plant news of February 2015, I spotted some amusing headlines, such as: “How to turn flowers into fireworks (without making them explode).” and “Distant plant species produce love-child after 60-millon-year breakup.” and “40 of the world’s weirdest flowers.” These stories exemplified…
From Climate Change to Plant Facebook Beginning in January 2013, I’ve started 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, month-by-month. Since I still…
Another Take On The Term “Rewilding”? In the previous post, we explored the concept of crop “rewilding” as it pertains to genetically resurrecting “wild” plant genes by reintroducing or by re-activating them in some modern crop plants. One of the main justifications for doing so is to develop new crop…
A Blast From The Past? Is it just me, or does there seem to be a lot about the so-called “rewilding” of crop plants in the news lately? (Please see here, for example.) I think I first heard the term “rewilding” about 20 years ago in a Biology Department seminar…