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Plants

Working under LED lighting in a tomato greenhouse in the Netherlands

New Research

Scientists Are Hacking Tomatoes To Make Them Keep Growing All Night Long

Geneticists are working to circumvent the tomato’s circadian rhythm

Cool Finds

America’s Tumbleweeds Are Actually Russian Invaders

Some say the tumbleweed’s takeover of the American West was the most aggressive weed invasion in our country’s history

Cool Finds

How Plants Could Clean Up Abandoned Mines—And Extract Metal in the Process

Some groups are researching how plants can be used to clean up dangerous metals from the ground

Fun fact: Most of the fish oil harvested from the sea goes to fish farms.

New Research

Fish Oil Could (One Day) Come From Plants

A field trial of genetically modified oilseed plants that can make fish oil hopes to help fish farming become more sustainable

This hardware innovation will make it easier for conservationists to identify where illegal deforestation efforts are happening and stop them before the trees have been taken down.

Tech Watch

How Solar-Powered Recycled Smartphones Could Save the Rainforest

A Silicon Valley non-profit is ready to give the forests of Africa and the Amazon ears to listen for loggers—and the ability to phone the authorities

We're spending hundreds of millions of dollars to mimic a mangrove tree, basically.

Trending Today

Texas Just Started Building the Largest Carbon Capture Facility Ever

The plant will soak up most of the emissions from its coal-fired power production

New Research

Moose Spit is Antifungal

Moose may use their antifungal saliva to keep the fungus on their favorite foods in check

New Research

Gardens May Be Therapeutic For Dementia Patients

Adding green space to nursing homes might be a good idea

The skeleton of a young man, whose tooth plaque was used in the study.

New Research

Ancient Tooth Plaque Shows Our Ancestors Used to Feast on Weeds

Purple nutsedge is a pest today, but thousands of years ago it was probably valued for its cavity-preventing properties

Legos can not only build great castles and towers for play — they could also offer the most affordable way to study plant root growth yet.

How Legos Could Change What We Know About Plants

Researchers are using toy bricks to study how plants react to environmental factors.

Agave plants blooming in Mexico

Cool Finds

80-Year-Old Agave Plant About To Bloom

The 25-foot-tall plant is finally ready to bloom after 80 long years

Leaves of the plant Plantago lanceolata infected with powdery mildew.

What the Spread Of A Plant Mildew Tells Us About Forests

Fragmenting habitats into smaller pieces may let diseases spread more easily, a new study finds

Fairy circles in Namibia.

New Research

What Causes Namibia’s Fairy Circles? Probably Not Termites

Namibia’s mysterious fairy circles might actually be caused by competition between grasses

This is one of the oldest living trees in the world

Cool Finds

Is This the Oldest Living Tree?

This Norway Spruce in Sweden has roots that are over 9,000 years old

New Research

Here’s Where Species Loss From Climate Change Will Probably Be Most Extreme

Impacts to species around the world due to climate change are uncertain, but here’s a data-backed idea of how things will play out

"I began to wonder," says Smithsonian researcher Dolores Piperno, who studies the ancestor of the corn plant, "what did the plants actually look like between 10,000 and 13,000 years ago? Did they look the same?"

To Decode the Mystery of Corn, Smithsonian Scientists Recreate Earth as it Was 10,000 Years Ago

As part of a groundbreaking study, researchers built a greenhouse “time machine”

A tobacco hornworm caterpillar chowing down on a wild tobacco plant in the Great Basin Desert, Utah

Caterpillars Repel Predators With Second-Hand Nicotine Puffs

As far as spiders are concerned, caterpillars have a case of very bad breath

Cut Down a Forest, Let It Grow Back, And Even 30 Years Later It’s Not the Same

In the tropics, secondary forests are often “ephemeral,” succumbing to deforestation every 10 years or so and thus never able to fully recover

None

These Carnivorous Plants Glow Under Ultraviolet Light to Attract Prey

Their florescent blue glow lures ants to their death. Mask it, and the plants barely catch any

Purple loosestrife, which is blooming 24 days earlier than it did a century ago, poses a serious threat to wetland habitats.

How Climate Change is Helping Invasive Species Take Over

Longer seasons and warmer weather have combined to be a game-changer in the plant wars

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