Three-quarters of the population will get an itchy red rash if exposed to the urushiol oil inside poison ivy's leaves, stem and roots. One-quarter of people will not have any reaction to exposure.
The Herbarium at West Virginia University, the largest collection of preserved plant specimens in the state, is participating in a National Science Foundation project to make plant collections from the Southeast United States available online for international study.
A team of UW biologists has identified a key mechanism plants use to decide when to release their floral scents to attract pollinators. Their findings, published the week of June 29 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, connect the production and release of these fragrant chemicals to the innate circadian rhythms that pulse through all life on Earth.
The discovery was made during an analysis of a species of mistletoe whose apparent ability to survive without key genes involved in energy production could make it one of the most unusual plants on Earth.
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A team of University of Washington researchers has identified a mechanism that some plant cells use to receive complex and contradictory messages from their neighbors.
A team of scientists have shown that two species of silver flies from the Pacific Northwest will attack and eat hemlock woolly adelgid, the pest responsible for killing millions of hemlock trees in seventeen East Coast states. The team has released the flies, from Washington State, in experiments in Tennessee and New York, and early results look promising. If their experiment succeeds, these flies could help protect threatened eastern and Carolina hemlock trees.
University of Delaware researchers have discovered a soil microbe that mobilizes an “iron shield” to block the uptake of toxic arsenic in rice. The UD finding gives hope that a natural, low-cost solution — a probiotic for rice plants — may be in sight to protect this global food source from accumulating harmful levels of one of the deadliest poisons on the planet. Rice currently is a staple in the diet of more than half the world’s population.
Her name is Bartzella, and she is something of a novelty and relative newcomer in the world of peonies. She definitely stands out among the other peonies in the Smithsonian’s Mary Livingston Ripley Garden in Washington, D.C. Her top distinction is the color of her petals: yellow.
New research has revealed that parasitic ‘vampire’ plants that attach onto and derive nutrients from another living plant may benefit the abundance and diversity of surrounding vegetation and animal life.
Researchers at the University of Georgia have used a gene editing tool known as CRISPR/Cas to modify the genome of a tree species for the first time. Their research opens the door to more rapid and reliable gene editing of plants.
A new Cornell study of New York state apple orchards finds that pesticides harm wild bees, and fungicides labeled “safe for bees” also indirectly may threaten native pollinators.
“Our results contribute to the conversation about how natural or humanized the landscape of America was when Europeans first arrived,” co-author Steve Tulowiecki says.
The rare corpse flower, widely known as the world’s smelliest plant, has started to bloom McMaster, one of only a handful in the world to do so this year.
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Researchers at Kansas State University have looked into how vegetables take up different soil contaminants. They also considered how different gardening practices could reduce this uptake. They found that, in the majority of examples, eating vegetables grown in the contaminated soils studied was safe.
Scores of young transgenic American chestnut trees developed at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) will take root this spring across New York state, representing one more step in the restoration of a once-dominant species that has virtually vanished from the landscape.
Silver nanoparticles produced with an extract of wormwood can stop several strains of the fungus phytophthora dead in its tracks.
More than 1,600 trained volunteers helped expand the reach and accuracy of long-term geographical tracking to predict the spread of sudden oak death in California. Results showed that trained citizen scientists were as effective as professionals in data collection, whether or not they had a professional background in science.
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A demographic study of two endangered plants at Point Reyes National Seashore north of San Francisco shows that they favor recently disturbed open areas over areas that have established plant cover. The study strengthens the case for removing the beachgrass originally planted to stabilize the dunes and allowing the sand to move in response to storm surges and strong tides.
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An international group of scientists discovered the first specimens of slime molds from the Namib Desert in southern Africa.
“Ecosystems all around the world are being altered at an alarming rate. In order to protect biodiversity as best as we possibly can, we need to understand how these systems work. To achieve that goal, our study shows that it’s important to go beyond what’s immediately visible to study what nature has hidden below ground" - Dr. Graham Zemunik
Scientists at The University of Manchester have discovered a way to make trees grow bigger and faster, which could increase supplies of renewable resources and help trees cope with the effects of climate change.
An international team of researchers tracked nitrogen as soil bacteria pulled it from the air and released it as plant-friendly ammonium. This process—called biological nitrogen fixation—substantially promoted growth in certain grass crops, offering new strategies for eco-friendly farming.
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Introduced plants make up roughly half the diet of two subspecies of endangered tortoise, field research in the Galapagos reveals. Tortoises seem to prefer non-native to native plants and the plants may help them to stay well-nourished during the dry season.
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Most areas of Texas should have great wildflower blooms this spring, and some areas already have a great show started thanks to intermittent rains since last fall, according to a restoration ecologist at The University of Texas at Austin's Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.
Even during a good year, soybean farmers nationwide are, in essence, taking a loss. That's because changes in weather patterns have been eating into their profits and taking quite a bite: $11 billion over the past 20 years, according to a study by University of Wisconsin-Madison agronomists published last month in Nature Plants.
By studying the morphology and physiology of plants with tiny conical “hairs” or microfibers on the surface of their leaves, such as tomatoes, balsam pears and the flowers Berkheya purpea and Lychnis sieboldii, a team of researchers in Japan uncovered water collection-and-release secrets that may, in turn, one day soon “bioinspire” a technology to pull fresh water from the air to help alleviate global water shortages.
Researchers have produced the first haplotype map of wheat that provides detailed description of genetic differences in a worldwide sample of wheat lines. This is an important foundation for future improvements in wheat around the world.
Research at the University of Adelaide’s Waite campus has shed light on the action of the serious agricultural pest, cereal cyst nematode, which will help progress improved resistant varieties.
In Nature Genetics, DOE JGI researchers and longtime collaborators at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research and Clark University conducted the first broad, comparative phylogenomic analysis of mycorrhizal fungi to understand the basis for fungal symbiotic relationships with plants.
Great, wonderful, wacky things can come in tiny genomic packages. That’s one lesson to be learned from the carnivorous bladderwort. According to new research, this plant houses more genes than species including grape, coffee or papaya — despite having a much smaller genome.
When Edgar Spalding crunches data on Wisconsin corn, the numbers boggle the mind. Four million acres are planted annually, with 30,000 seeds planted per acre, producing about 120 billion seedlings sprouting skyward each May. With help from the Center for High Throughput Computing (CHTC), Spalding is applying this astronomical sense of scale to our understanding of corn. Spalding uses the HTC capabilities pioneered by Miron Livny, Morgridge Institute for Research chief technology officer, to quantify the incredibly complex process of corn growth from seed to vigorous seedling — not just one at a time, but over thousands of samples.
Tiny ants may seem like an odd food source for black bears, but the protein-packed bugs are a major part of some bears’ diets and a crucial part of the food web that not only affects other bugs, but plants too.
The first comprehensive assessment of native vs. non-native plant distribution in the continental U.S., finds non-native plant species are much more widespread than natives, a finding the authors call very surprising. Even species with only a handful of occurrences were distributed widely.
An international team of researchers says climate change, the loss of biosphere integrity, land-system change, and altered biogeochemical cycles like phosphorus and nitrogen runoff have all passed beyond levels that put humanity in a “safe operating space.” Civilization has crossed four of nine so-called planetary boundaries as the result of human activity, according to a report published today in Science by the 18-member research team.
A team of scientists has sequenced whole genomes from 544 unrelated trees of the same species. An August 2014 study identified gene sequences from Populus trichocarpa, to understand how trees adapt to different climates.
Charles Messing, Ph.,D., has identified a new, very rare species of sea lily. Rather than name the creature himself, he's providing the opportunity of a lifetime and auctioning off those rights on eBay. Funds to help further research.
Your eye movements and gazes tell researchers what you value in plant purchases - the plant itself, how it was grown or price.
SPOKANE, Washington – Not many sixth-graders can say they have been published in an academic journal, but Caleb Lefcort can cross that distinction off his list. Caleb got into a discussion with his father, Hugh Lefcort, professor of biology at Gonzaga University, as to whether the seed burrs from cheatgrass would survive the laundry cycle. Hugh believed the seeds would not survive. Instead of simply taking his father’s word for it, Caleb – who was in fourth grade at the time – suggested the scientific method: an experiment. What the researchers discovered surprised them.
Researchers with UF/IFAS’ Center for Aquatic and Invasive Plants spent more than a year developing a searchable website and database to help Floridians assess problem— or just plain puzzling —non-native plants.
What some farmers grow as pasture plants others view as weeds. But with the need to cheaply feed food animals rising, circumstances are right for the weed invasion to escalate.
On August 14, 1864, in a Union Army camp in Georgia, a captain from Wisconsin plucked a plant, pressed it onto a sheet of paper, wrote a letter describing the plant as "certainly the most interesting specimen I ever saw," and sent it with the plant to a scientist he called "Friend" in Wisconsin.
A patent-pending technology at Kansas State University has built resistance to certain viruses in wheat plants. These viruses can be an economic drain to wheat farmers by costing them 5 to 10 percent or more in yield reductions per crop. Although the technology involves genetic engineering, which is not an option for wheat in today's market, the research has extended to building this resistance in non-genetically engineered wheat lines as well.
Scientists using a microbe that occurs naturally in eastern cottonwood trees have boosted the ability of willow and lawn grass to withstand the withering effects of the nasty industrial pollutant phenanthrene.
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