Citrus thorny problem solved, according to ScienceDaily 18 June 2020, and Current Biology 18 June 2020; doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2020.05.068. Thorns on citrus trees are well known to form when branches start to develop, but stop growing and become hard and dry, leaving a sharp spike. Scientists at Yale University have now tracked down the genetic control […]
Fungus unchanged for 400 million years, as reported in Botany One 29 June 2020, and Annals of Botany 24 June 2020, doi: 10.1093/aob/mcaa113. Scientists have studied thin sections of the fossil bearing Lower Devonian Rhynie chert in Scotland, which is dated as 410 million years old. They found exquisitely preserved reproductive structures, known as spore-saccule […]
Urban trees prevent deaths, claim scientists, according to ScienceDaily 16 June 2020 and The Lancet Planetary Health, vol. 4, April 2020, doi: 10.1016/S2542-5196(20)30058-9. Researchers in Philadelphia, USA, have used a method named Greenspace-Health Impact Assessment to estimate the effect of increasing the tree canopy area within the city. The method estimates the number of preventable […]
Oldest mahogany found, according to ScienceDaily and University of Kansas News 15 April 2020, and American Journal of Botany 5 January 2020 doi: 10.1002/ajb2.1416. Brian Atkinson of University of Kansa has studied a fossilised fruit found in a rock collected on Shelter Point on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada, and identified it as belonging to […]
Flowers bounce back after injury, according to ScienceDaily 7 April 2020 and BBC News 8 April 2020, and New Phytologist 6 April 2020, doi: 10.1111/nph.16482. Several years ago Scott Armbruster, now a Professor of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Portsmouth UK, was in Australia where he noticed a trigger plant that had been […]
Antarctic rainforest found, according to BBC News and ScienceDaily 1 April 2020, and Nature 2 April 2020, doi: 10.1038/s41586-020-2148-5. A team of scientists from Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI), Germany and the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) have examined a core of rock from West Antarctica, approximately 900km from the South Pole and found it contained fossilised […]
Possum pollination found, as described in Science (AAAS) News and ScienceDaily 12 February 2020, In Defense of Plants 16 February 2020, and Ecology, 11 February 2020; doi: 10.1002/ecy.3001. Scientists in South America have studied an obscure plant named Scybalium fungiforme, that lives most of its life underground as root parasite, but does produce flowers that […]
Insect pollination extended by 50 million years, claim scientists in Science (AAAS) News and ScienceDaily 11 November 2019, and PNAS 11 November 2019 doi: 10.1073/pnas.1916186116. Scientists from China, Germany and USA have studied a beetle preserved in Burmese amber and found it was carrying pollen grains from a flowering plant. The beetle belongs to a […]
“Good coral parenting” for reef recovery found, according to reports in ScienceDaily 16 September 2019 and Scientific Reports 16 September 2019, doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-50045-y. Corals live in a symbiotic relationship with algae – single celled plants that provide the coral with a lot of nutrients, as well as giving the corals their colour. When the corals […]
Reef in no trouble at all, says expert in an interview recorded by the Institute of Public Affairs. Dismissed university Professor Peter Ridd, a marine geophysicist at James Cook University, made the following comments about the Great Barrier Reef: “When you bury down to the data about that bleaching event in 2016, at the extreme […]