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.
Planting a garden for winter-active insects is a wonderful way to support local biodiversity. Your garden will thrive with the free pollination and pest control services the insects provide.
Cultivating traditional plants is a way of creating a space that is familiar within a new and often alienating environment.
(Shutterstock)
Seedkeeping can create a sense of home, reconnect communities with ancestral crops and preserve biodiversity and culturally significant crops for future generations.
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.
Trees and shrubs in cold-weather climates rely on certain signals, such as temperature and light, to know when to leaf out and bloom. Climate change is scrambling those signals.
A volunteer looks for waterbirds at Point Reyes National Seashore in California during the National Audubon Society’s annual Christmas Bird Count.
Kerry W/Flickr
COVID-19 kept many scientists from doing field research in 2020, which means that important records will have data gaps. But volunteers are helping to plug some of those holes.
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.
People love to connect with nature and that’s possible with vertical gardens on high-rise developments. But gardens need a gardener to keep things under control.
Rodd’s star hair (Astrotricha roddii) an Endangered NSW shrub.
Gavin Phillips/NSW DPIE, Saving Our Species
A new study of how stinging tree venom causes intense agony may help uncover new ways to manage pain.
A: Border Cave’s 200,000 year old fossilised grass fragments. B: The profile section of desiccated grass bedding dating to around 43,000 years ago.
Both images copyright Lyn Wadley
Before 200,000 years ago, close to the origin of our species, people preferred the use of broad-leaved grasses to build their beds and resting areas using ash layers underneath.