Plants need light to feed themselves, so they grow in ways that help them collect as much of it as they can. Sometimes that’s straight up, but not always.
When a plant is stressed, it mobilises its resources and often converts its starch reserves back to sugar. As soon as this happens, the stressed plant becomes sweeter than its healthier neighbours.
Spring is rapidly approaching and many birds are hunting for the best nesting sites. Competition is fierce — especially for species that nest in tree hollows.
It’s no coincidence that more books about trees are popping up. There is an air of desperation in new books by Peter Wohllben, Janine Burke and others.
Caley’s grevillea (Grevillea caleyi) occurs in Sydney. It needs fire to germinate but burns are hard to carry out near urban areas.
Tony Auld
Many threatened plant species aren’t being targeted for conservation. Identifying which are closest to being lost forever is the first step to protect them.
Myricaria germanica is a rare and endangered species hit hard by climate change, but little research is undertaken to help save it.
Martino Adamo
New research found colour played a major role skewing researcher bias — pretty, vibrant flowers get more scientific attention than dull plants, regardless of their ecological significance.
Native deciduous trees are rare in Australia, which means many of the red, yellow and brown leaves we associate with autumn come from introduced species.
Longleaf pines support one another through mycorrhizae – mutually beneficial relationships between certain fungi and the trees’ roots.
Justin Meissen/Flickr
We may think of plants as passive life forms, but they can cooperate, share resources, send one another warnings, and distance themselves from their communities when survival depends on it.
Rock fern, Cheilanthes austrotenuifoliaDonald Hobern/Wikimedia
This Easter, read about this remarkable species of resurrection fern — plants that appear dead and dry, but under the right conditions rapidly spring to life.
Creeping avens – a plant native to mountains in Central Asia and Europe.
Losapio/Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution
As invasive species transform the world, frontline agencies take solace that species needing unique partners can’t invade alone. A new study on figs shows they may find new partners to invade anyway.
Researchers have unearthed a ‘biological switch’ which could boost crop yield worldwide.
Kangaroo Apple collected by Preiss at Swan River in the early19th century.
Catalogue des herbiers de Genève (CHG). Conservatoire & Jardin botaniques de la Ville de Genève
Johann August Ludwig Preiss was the first professional botanist to systematically collect flora in the Colony of Western Australia. Yet he is little remembered today.