Genes As Parasites? Yikes, has it really been over 40 years since the publication of The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins? Indeed it has! (Please see Ref. 1 below.) This landmark book was very controversial when it was first published because it depicted biological organisms basically as “vehicles” for the…
Proprioception: sensing of the posture, shape and relative orientation of body parts Are Plants Self-Aware? No, I’m NOT referring to plant self-awareness as it relates to plant “consciousness”. (If you’re interested in such metaphysical aspects of plant physiology, please see here, for example.) What I’m referring to is the notion…
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…
“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…
Looking Out For Number One In a previous post, way back last December, regarding the notion of plant “pain”, I acknowledged the subject of “damaged-self recognition” in plants, but I didn’t want to elaborate on it at that time. Well, it looks like now’s the time…. “Damaged-self recognition” in plants…
From A Pumpkin Movie to Jimi Hendrix Yep, the plant news from last month was quite diverse. Let’s start with two movies – one happens over a time scale of months, and the other happens over a time scale of billionths of seconds. “Over the course of five months in…
From Where Potatoes Came From to Where Agriculture Is Going Last November the plant research news ranged from the past history of one of our most important crop plants to the future of agriculture in the 21st century. November is the month of Thanksgiving in the USA, and one common…
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…
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…