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Plants

The Grevy's zebra (left) and the plains zebra may be tough to tell apart—until you examine their dietary preferences via their poop.

New Research

Big African Animals Are Pickier Eaters Than We Imagined

To the surprise of ecologists, plant-eaters manage to coexist on the savanna by each choosing different favorite foods

EcoLogicStudio's 430-square-foot gazebo, called the Urban Algae Folly, is on display at the Expo 2015 world's fair in Milan.

Will Buildings of the Future Be Cloaked In Algae?

Built by a London architecture firm, a new gazebo has a living “skin” that produces oxygen and absorbs considerable amounts of carbon dioxide

Two Nudes in a Forest, from 1939, one of the paintings on display in the Bronx. Kahlo painted it for Dolores del Río, an actor who played the role of the "other" in Hollywood films and who often played Indian women in Mexican films despite that she was not herself of indigenous descent, as Joanna L. Groarke writes in the book that accompanies the exhibition.

Urban Explorations

Visit Frida Kahlo’s Recreated Garden to See the Plants That Influenced Her Art

The New York Botanical Garden is showing rare paintings and drawings alongside the types of flora Kahlo herself once cultivated

Riders view the incredible vista in Dýrafjörður, Iceland, alongside their equine companions.

Why the Best Way to See Iceland Is by Horse

The country’s landscape is surreal and one-of-a-kind—so is a ride on the Icelandic equine

With Semios, Farmers Can Monitor Their Fields Remotely and Keep Pests Away

Paired with wireless sensors and cameras, aerosol pheromone pesticides have entered a new era of effectiveness and affordability

Flower power—how viable an option is it?

Turning Energy Plants Produce Into Usable Electricity

Plant-e, a company in the Netherlands, is placing conductors in the soil underneath plants to collect excess energy from photosynthesis

An artists interpretation of a large asteroid hitting Earth

Cool Finds

Scientists Bombard the Earth With Asteroids to Practice Saving It

The Planetary Defense Conference doesn’t just have papers and seminars. It also has an asteroid disaster scenario to solve.

A fairy circle in the Namibian desert — one of many large patches of barren earth ringed by short grass

New Research

Mysterious “Fairy” Circles Share Qualities With Human Skin

Researchers noticed that the pattern of Namibia’s “fairy” circles strongly resembles that of skin cell growth

A moth visits a male cone on Ephedra foeminea and feeds on a pollination droplet.

New Research

“Wereplant” Releases Its Pollen By the Light of the Full Moon

An unassuming shrub from the Mediterranean is the first documented case of a plant timing its reproduction to the lunar cycle

Screenshot from "Macro Timelapse" at Natural Recall

Cool Finds

Growing Plants Have Never Looked So Gruesome

All it takes is a slight shift of perspective to realize plants are far from inanimate

A vineyard in Pomerol, Aquitaine, France

Cool Finds

American Bugs Almost Wiped Out France’s Wine Industry

When the Great French Wine Blight hit in the mid 1800s, the culprit turned out to be a pest from the New World that would forever alter wine production

Scanning electron micrograph of a greenfly eye. Greenflies (aphid) have a pair of compound eyes. The small protrusion coming from the side of the eye is called an ocular tubercle, and it is made up of three lenses.

Art Meets Science

A Goat’s Stomach Never Looked So Good

Eleven venues worldwide will exhibit these 20 striking micrographs, MRI scans and illustrations—all winners of this year’s Wellcome Image Awards

This "smart" mattress cover can track sleep patterns along with respiration and heart rates.

This Week in Crowdfunding

A “Smart” Mattress Cover and Other Wild Ideas That Just Got Funded

Don’t have a green thumb? A sensor for your potted plants alerts you when they need watering

New Research

This Mysterious Plant Doesn’t Have Time for Junk DNA

Utricularia gibba has less DNA, but more genes

Revolution Bioengineering is working to genetically engineer petunias that continuously change from pink to blue and back again.

Art Meets Science

Would You Like to Grow Color-Changing Flowers?

A Colorado company is working to genetically engineer petunias that change colors throughout the day

You can thank these Theobroma cacao flowers for your brownie sundae.

The World of Chocolate

You Wouldn’t Have Chocolate Without Invisible Flies and Extreme Yeast

It takes a wild and temperamental menagerie to bring the beloved candy to store shelves. Bon appétit!

Dyed droplets are propelled off leaves by simulated rainfall

New Research

Life-Giving Rain Also Spreads Deadly Plant Disease

High-speed cameras show how leaf flexibility influences raindrop dispersal into the air — along with pathogens picked up from infected plants

New Research

Creating Drought-Tolerant Plants By Hacking Their Natural Responses

Which new technique will help plants survive with less water?

An aerial view of the lower portion of the Colorado River shows the leading edge of the water pulse flow on May 12, before it connected with the sea.

Anthropocene

The Colorado River Delta Turned Green After a Historic Water Pulse

The experimental flow briefly restored the ancient waterway and may have created new habitat for birds

Frost on a sprig of European mistletoe.

Medical Mistletoe: Can the Holiday Plant Really Fight Cancer?

In some countries, cancer patients take mistletoe injections to ease symptoms, but the exact effects of the extracts are still up for debate

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