California is what’s known as a biodiversity hotspot because of the large amount of endemic natural life found here, especially plants. Endemic means these plants can only be found here and nowhere ...

A new tool could make it easier to study scarce plant molecules. Researchers have developed so-called microbial cell factories -- using E. coli and yeast -- to produce a special class of plant ...

David Kuchta, Ph.D. has 10 years of experience in gardening and has read widely in environmental history and the energy transition. An environmental activist since the 1970s, he is also a historian, ...

An unusual arrangement of leaves in a 407-million-year-old fossilized plant is complicating scientists’ understanding of plant evolution. Most land plants living today have spiral patterns involving ...

On a freezing day in December 2021, I arrived in Madison, Wisconsin, to visit Simon Gilroy’s lab. In one room of the lab sat a flat of young tobacco and Arabidopsis plants, each imbued with ...

“Help!” “Land here!” “Conserve resources!” “Get off!” “My fruits are ready to eat!” These are just some of the many messages we know plants—from a patch of moss to a 300-foot sequoia—can send. In fact ...

One of the ways that plants are distinct from mammals is that plants don’t have nipples. Despite this disadvantage, one can still get milk from a plant. Generally speaking, what’s called plant milk is ...

Glow-in-the-dark plants bright enough to light up streets at night may sound like the stuff of science fiction or fantasy. But scientists have already made plants that emit a greenish glow. They are ...