Black wattle is part of Australia’s iconic acacia family, but it’s largely regarded as a pest overseas. But this fast-growing plant is a boon to gardeners, improving soil and sheltering other plants.
Even the slightest touch of a D. moroides leaf can cause excruciating pain. An intense stinging, burning pain is felt immediately, then intensifies, reaching a peak after 20 – 30 minutes.
Marina Hurley, Author provided
Mosses are the only plants that can withstand life in East Antarctica’s frozen landscape. But a new study shows that life is getting even harder, as ozone loss and climate change make conditions even drier.
Xanthorrhoea have no real trunk – just tightly packed leaves.
In a few idyllic parts of Queensland grows the idiot fruit, a tall tree with intricate flowers and some of the largest seeds in Australia.
To grow tall enough to reach the canopy, a species of screw pine unique to Lord Howe Island has evolved its own rainwater harvesting system.
Matthew Biddick, CC BY-SA
Despite the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, passed by the US Congress 40 years ago, Native Americans still struggle to protect public lands where they practice their religions.
An example of woody plant encroachment over Eagle-Siding in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province. D Edwards (1954) and James Puttick (2010).
Images courtesy of rePhotoSA.
Only when flowering is Pilostyles visible externally, the flowers erupting from the stems of its host like a weird botanical Alien.
Melburnians admire the first primrose to arrive in the colony, transported by a Wardian case, in Edward Hopley’s A Primrose from England, circa 1855.
Bendigo Art Gallery, Gift of Mr and Mrs Leonard Lansell 1964.
A wood and glass case invented in the early 19th-century transformed the movement of plants around the world. In Melbourne, several thousand people greeted a primrose on its arrival from England.
Plant hackers at work: microscopic oomycete spores infiltrating a plant root.
John Herlihy
Oomycete spores hack into plants to get what they need, causing agricultural disease. Can researchers figure out how to close plants’ security loopholes and create more resilient crops?