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This week, we’re talking about a cool gene regulatory mechanism that keeps ribosomes busy, the truth behind French lillies and which plants best not to pick.

• Jérémie Makiese – Miss You – Belgium 🇧🇪 – Official Music Video – Eurovision 2022
• Noise reduction by upstream open reading frames | Nature Plants
• Wu, HW., Fajiculay, E., Wu, JF. et al. Noise reduction by upstream open reading frames. Nat. Plants (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-022-01136-8
• Upstream open reading frame – Wikipedia 
• Stop picking carnivorous penis plants, Cambodian environmental officials plead | Live Science 
• Fleur-de-lis – Wikipedia 
• Making New Climate Data from Old Timber | The New Yorker 
• A first: Scientists grow plants in soil from the Moon — ScienceDaily 
• Plant-inspired TransfOrigami microfluidics 
• The invaders destroyed the National Gene Bank of Plants of Ukraine | odessa-journal.com 
• Cats Remember Each Other’s Names, Japanese Study Suggests 

All views are our own. If you want to comment or correct anything we said, leave a comment under this post or reach out to us via twitter, facebook or instagram.

Our opening and closing music is Caravana by Phillip Gross

Until next time!

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It’s travel season here at Plants and Pipettes and so we thought we’d share some travel facts from the plant world! How do plants travel? Is collecting trees cool? How does humidity propel seeds forward? We have the answers.

• Martha Stewart just flew private with eight trees—see the photo to prove it
• A tree crosses the sea: how the richest man in Georgia buys and transports the bushes of the poorest farms – Kiratas
• Taming the Garden (2021) – IMDb
• Legends of the coco de mer – Wikipedia
• Long Distance Seed Dispersal by Forest Elephants | Ecology and Evolution
• Small mammal personalities generate context dependence in the seed dispersal mutualism | PNAS 
• Watch a bunchberry dogwood plant in action | Science News
• Hook-and-loop fastener – Wikipedia
• Cabbage Patch: Fifth Crop Harvested Aboard Space Station | NASA
• Travel in city road networks follows similar transport trade-off principles to neural and plant arbors | Journal of The Royal Society Interface
• Moon tree – Wikipedia
• other sticky plants: Ultimate Hitchhiker
• The walk and jump of horsetail spores (Equisetum) 
• Fastest Plant on Earth | Science News for Students
• Oilbirds disperse large seeds at longer distance than extinct megafauna | Scientific Reports
• China’s Moon Plants Are Dead | Space 
• China grows plants on the moon!
• How a Kitty Walked 200 Miles Home: The Science of Your Cat’s Inner Compass

All views are our own. If you want to comment or correct anything we said, leave a comment under this post or reach out to us via twitter, facebook or instagram.

Our opening and closing music is Caravana by Phillip Gross

Until next time!

Support Us!

This week, we’re talking about the worst favourite plant ever, keystone genes and how surfers can be scientists. Also: your dog’s breed doesn’t mean what you think it means. 

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Mysteriously we came back yet again for more plant facts. This week, we’re checking a plant’s pores, take about unextinct flowers and why some plants eat the very insects that pollinate them. 

• Books — Information is Beautiful 
• Erik Nylund
• Incredible x-axis here. (twitter)  
• Beautiful News / Visualising Victorian News – The British Library
• Expression of a CO2-permeable aquaporin enhances mesophyll conductance in the C4 species Setaria viridis | eLife 
• The power of air: Airborne environmental DNA plant community monitoring
• Airborne environmental DNA metabarcoding detects more diversity, with less sampling effort, than a traditional plant community survey | BMC Ecology and Evolution
• High-quality genome assembly of a Pestalotiopsis fungus using DIY-friendly methods [version 1; peer review: awaiting peer review]
• Leonardo da Vinci’s rule for how trees branch was close, but wrong | Science News
• Physical Review E – Accepted Paper: Experimental evidence for logarithmic fractal structure of botanical trees
• Tree Branching: Leonardo da Vinci’s Rule versus Biomechanical Models – PMC
• We Just Found a Secret Trait That May Help Redwood Trees Survive Climate Change
• Lost South American Wildflower “Extinctus” Not Extinct After All – “Was It Really That Easy?” 
• Some jack-in-the-pulpit plants may use sex to lure pollinators to their death | Science News

All views are our own. If you want to comment or correct anything we said, leave a comment under this post or reach out to us via twitter, facebook or instagram.

Our opening and closing music is Caravana by Phillip Gross

Until next time!

Support Us!

It’s our belated easter episode! We talk about the Queen of Vegetables, the mighty eggplant. We filled almost an hour with eggplant facts, factoids and words that merely resemble a fact from a distance. 

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We finally found a way to market non-dairy milk as milk without upsetting any consumer or dairy company: cowpea milk. Plus: we discuss plantibodies, micronutrients and, weirdly enough, ocelot pee.

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We begin this week with a looooong discussion about the movie “Little Joe”. It’s fun (talking about the movie, not the movie itself. Don’t watch it). Also we have new research about epimutagenesis, grain-free ice cream and the benefits of weeds. 

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Kat Austen is an artist and researcher based in Berlin. Kat was so kind to talk to us about her work about microplastics in trees, her view on science and art and her upcoming projects. Welcome to Plants and Pipettes: Kat Austen!

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Have you heard of fynbos? This week, we discuss how the fynbos ecosystem withstands turning into a forest, what problems arise from academic bullying and why you’d pump nectar out of a flower. 

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Joram is sick again but it won’t stop us from talking about plants. This time, it’s more plant adjacent: we’re talking about a weird new way some bacteria do photosynthesis. Also lots of clever animals and a tale of paleobotanical experiments.

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In this episode, Joram learns about wuthering heights and Tegan learns why chickpeas are believed to giggle in Germany. Also there is talk about red nectar, flammable litter and really old trees.

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This week, we’re talking about the link between the constructor of fountains, Neptune, and a small seagrass in the Mediterranean sea. Also more on X-ray microscopy and a discussion on who deserves to be on the author list (it’s Joram).

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Hi! Heads up, there is a long spoiler for Don’t look up at the beginning. Did you know that we have chapters to quickly skip ahead? Now you do. Also, we talk about a very poisonous plant and how to move owls!

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We all have goals this year. Joram’s goal is to befriend a crow, but only if Tegan doesn’t stab him with her fantastically hard claws first. Yes, this is a plant podcast, we promise.

• Mutation bias reflects natural selection in Arabidopsis thaliana
• New Evidence Challenges The Idea That Mutations Are Entirely Random 

• A Newly Discovered Fossil Could Be The Answer to Darwin’s ‘Abominable’ Mystery
• To New Beginnings: Riboproteogenomics Discovery of N-Terminal Proteoforms in Arabidopsis Thaliana
• Hidden talents of mosses and lichens – The Global Plant Council
• Top 10 species new to science in 2021 | Kew
• 14 Things You Need To Know About Wolverine’s Claws | ScreenRant
•  Frontiers | The Toughest Material in the Plant Kingdom: An Update on Sporopollenin | Plant Science
• (PDF) LANGUAGE DISCRIMINATION BY LARGE-BILLED CROWS
• Twitter Thread on Crows by @ sabrinaschalz

Check out the Plant Book Club episode on Entangled Life!

All views are our own. If you want to comment or correct anything we said, leave a comment under this post or reach out to us via twitter, facebook or instagram.

Our opening and closing music is Caravana by Phillip Gross

Until next time!

Support Us!

We just read “Entangled Life” by Merlin Sheldrake and now we’re considering turning this little show into a fungal podcast. Before that happens, here is an episode of all things we love about fungi and plants together.

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