Plant Cut-Backs “Pruning is one of the most important cultural practices for maintaining woody plants, including ornamental trees and shrubs, fruits and nuts. It involves both art and science: art in making the pruning cuts properly, and science in knowing how and when to prune for maximum benefits.” (from ref.…
iPlants: An Introduction From movies and video games to landscape design to education to scientific research, we are increasingly encountering plants in silico (that is, computer-simulated plants). Virtual plants fall into three categories: (1) computer-generated images, (2) outputs from computer algorithms, and (3) computer-searchable plant gene and protein databases. What…
The End of Winter? We experienced a relatively warm January here in western Washington (record-setting, in fact). Some daffodils are already coming up and the witch hazels are blooming. But most of the trees haven’t started to leaf out because they haven’t yet emerged from winter dormancy. Most woody perennial…
The world’s most abundant and most important enzyme is RuBisCo. It’s the most abundant because it’s present in relatively large quantities in every photosynthetic organism on the planet – from microscopic cyanobacteria and phytoplankton in the oceans to the leaves of giant-sized trees in the tropics. It’s also the most…
“Hot Plants?” In the previous post, the topic was how plants survive the cold. Although some perennial plants can withstand winter temperatures well below zero (F), plants certainly don’t generate body heat like mammals do in order to warm themselves. Or do they? There are a few plants in nature,…
Plants Can’t Come In From The Cold Imagine for a moment that you had to stand outside your house or apartment, without moving, all winter long…and that you were naked. How long do you think you could last? Not long, especially if the temperature went below freezing. And certainly not…
A Truly Ancient Grain? The wheat variety called Kamut® has a fascinating history. According to “Kamut®: Ancient Grain, New Cereal”, one of the original growers, and one of the trademark holders, of Kamut®, Robert M. Quinn recounts the story of this unusual wheat variety. “Following WWII, a US airman claimed…
Sniffing Out Ethylene In the previous post I summarized the latest information on how the plant hormone ethylene is made (at least in the model plant Arabidopsis). Though most people are familiar with the plant hormone ethylene mainly because of its effects on fruit ripening, the list of plant responses…
C’est un gaz. Es un gas. Es ist ein gas. It’s a Gas! If you are familiar with the gaseous plant hormone ethylene, it’s most likely because of its ability to promote fruit ripening in apples, bananas, tomatoes, etc.. Ethylene also affects many other aspects of a plant’s life cycle,…
Fried Green Tomatoes About this time of year in the North Temperate Zone people may be getting very tired of fried green tomatoes and green tomato pie. As a plant physiologist, I was often asked how to ripen green tomatoes. (Rather than go into this here, I’ll refer you to…