plants
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Devil’s Bargain
We already have planet-cooling technology. The problem is, it’s killing us.
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A crucial climate mystery is just under our feet
What if we could turn farms into giant greenhouse gas sponges?
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Robots, plants team up to make humans fall flat on their faces
By making plants mobile, you make them the natural enemies of a) humans and b) cats
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These tiny plants can live for 300 years with the help of their friends the ants
The herb Borderea chouardii is like the Disney heroine of plants
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Antarctic moss eats 8,000-year-old penguin poop
Earlier this year, a slightly horrifying factoid made its way around the internet: Penguins poop so much that piles of their poop can be seen from space. But take heart, people who don’t like thinking about mountains of bird guano: It turns out that today’s penguin dung heap could be tomorrow’s source of nutrition for […]
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Tulsa authorities bulldoze edible garden for being too tall
Denise Morrison had read the city code and knew her plants were legal. So why did the city come to her yard and bulldoze her garden?
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Pollution makes carnivorous plants go vegetarian
Acid rain apparently has one benefit: It gives carnivorous plants so much nitrogen that they no longer need to eat meat. A new study has determined that sundews in Swedish bogs are cutting back on their insect consumption, which is good news if you’re an insect or a human concerned about a Little Shop of Horrors scenario. Unfortunately, […]
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‘Himalayan Viagra’ is going extinct
A parasitic caterpillar fungus that grows in the Himalayas has many names, according to Scientific American — yarsagumba, yarchagumba, yartsa gunba, yatsa gunbu. But we are only going to remember one name: Himalayan Viagra. This fungus, which leeches off of Tibetan ghost moth larvae, is said to get the fellas going when boiled and consumed […]
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The top 10 new species of 2011, including a walking cactus and Spongebob Squarepants
The International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University has convened a committee of scientists to determine the 10 best newly discovered species of 2011, and some of them are doozies. Even the monkey, which by all rights should be the cute one, is a noseless Voldemortian horror — and that’s not even to […]