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Reading Time: 3 minutesWhile the rest of us were distracted by the events of 2020, a desert plant quietly announced itself as a new cousin to the plant lab rat, Arabidopsis.

Reading Time: 4 minutesAgathis trees have survived since dinosaurs roamed the earth, but throughout the ages, tiny burrowing insects have made their life hard.

Reading Time: 6 minutesScientists, ultimately, want to understand things. And while true understanding, often comes through patience and skill – months or years of careful observation and measured experimentation – a lot of the time, the fastest way to understand something, is to F*** that something up.

Reading Time: 3 minutesIntense commercial harvesting of the alpine plant Fritillaria delavayi, which is used in traditional chinese medicine, may be driving the selection of duller, more camouflaged plants.

Reading Time: 5 minutesI will use this post on plant biology to complain about getting old and becoming more easily irritated. Age affects us all. But if your knees are aching and your back is sore, well!, at least you can rest assured that plants suffer from age, too. 

Reading Time: 4 minutesAutumn leaf colours have amazed the public for all of human history… and puzzled scientists for just as long. While the orange, yellow and brown hues of autumn can be easily understood, the stunning reds that some species display remain in question.

Reading Time: 4 minutesPlants rely on light to survive- without it, they can’t photosynthesise. Of course, like us, plants are used to normal light-dark cycles. But what happens when the lights just don’t come back on?

Reading Time: 5 minutesPlants are great at recognising what’s going on around them. They have built in temperature sensors and timers, they know what is up (and what is down), and they’ve worked out how to reach for and follow the sun’s light. Plants recognise when it’s winter, can tell if insects nibble on them,…

Reading Time: 6 minutesWe’ve now entered the season where you might just expect the occasional witch at your front door. Instead of leading to panic, the meeting leads to the exchange of sucrose laden gifts for spooky performances – all at a safe distance, of course. For the crop sorghum, however, a witch at the front…

Reading Time: 5 minutesThey’ve been described to “…capture the imagination as such behaviors are unexpected in otherwise often quiescent creatures” and to “…turn plants into aggressors against animals, trapping and devouring them”. Today, we’re talking about the touch response of plants.

Reading Time: 4 minutesTo survive on land, plants need to be able to control water loss. For most plants, this involves the simple act of coating their leaves in wax coat. Now, researchers shed light on when plants evolved this trait. 

Reading Time: 4 minutesIn a move that seems almost prescient in understanding the role of mutagenesis in crop improvement and basic biology, a group of ‘Atomic Gardeners’ triumphed the potential for atomic energy to be a force for good, just a few years after the devastation of WWII….

Reading Time: 4 minutesOne of the stupidest arguments of the past years (and oh, there have been some strong contenders!), was the debate about the EU trying to regulate how bendy bananas were. Today we discuss a much more rational question: how the cucumber got its curve. Trust us guys, there’s barely any politics in…

Reading Time: 4 minutesYou may have stared lovingly at a variegated Monstera, asking yourself if there will ever be a day when you can afford such beauty… but have you ever wondered why that beauty even exists? In a study that involves – of all things – white-out (Tipp-Ex), scientists find a link between patterns…

Reading Time: 3 minutesIn 2007, Chiou-Rong Sheue and colleagues published the discovery of a new type of chloroplast, called the bizonoplast. The bizonoplasts found deep within the cells of the spikemoss Selaginella erythropus was unique among its chloroplast kind in several ways. 

Reading Time: 5 minutesIn 2013, a new species of algae emerged from the sand crusts of Israel’s Negev desert (or, that is to say, the existence of the species was published).  In an environment where the sunlight beats down with fierce intensity, where temperatures reach 60 degrees on a hot summer’s day yet plunge to…