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How "vaccinating" plants can help crops fight pests without chemicals

Researchers propose a novel approach to sustainable agriculture through induced resistance in plants.

Ancient Syrians' nutrition looked a lot like the modern Mediterranean diet

This "new" diet has been around for thousands of years.

DNA study shows snow leopards eat a lot of things — including plants

Despite not being herbivorous, snow leopards seem to eat more plants than you'd think.

Your next salad could be grown just for you: custom-grown, soilless greens are coming

Personalized medicine is finally becoming a reality — starting with the food we eat.

Plants 'scream' under stress. Here is how you can hear them

Buy you still may not know if their crying means crying or something else.

The world's largest flower is in terrible danger. These researchers want to save it

The group is way more threatened than previously assumed.

Researchers unravel the mystery of how plants pass down genetic information across generations

This has implications way beyond just plants.

Scientists train AI to unlock data from millions of plant specimens

The algorithm analyzed the relationship between leaf size and climate

The roots of domestication: how some farmers selected the plants that changed the world

Plant domestication can't be explained just by the behavior of humans.

Stressed plants are very noisy, but you never listen

Plants also talk, and they talk a lot under stress, but we are not sure who listens to the different sounds they emit.

Free phone apps that identify plants from just a picture

It's like Shazam for plants -- you identify plants based on just taking a picture.

A hormone makes these plants thrive in the face of stress

It could help to engineer crops that can better cope with extreme weather.

Plant species that humans don't need are going towards extinction

Study finds more losers than winners among over 80,000 plant species.

A lot of plant genes actually come from bacteria. And this may explain the success of early land plants

Even the genes that make us shed tears when cutting onions are bacterial in origin.

Europe's woodlands want to shift north -- but birds are carrying them soutwards

Sometimes the plan is all set but logistics don't help you.

Scientists discover new organ in the world’s most studied plant

We thought we knew everything about this most-studied plant. But we were wrong.

Photosynthesis could be as old as life itself

We all got to eat, right?

Timelapse reveals the hidden dance of roots -- and how mutant plants do it differently

Turns out, watching plants grow is actually quite interesting.

The Earth's "lungs" could start irremediably deteriorating in just two decades, study shows

Plants are on track to move from being carbon sinks to carbon sources

Scientists compile the world's largest inventory of known plant species

It has over a million entries!

New Guinea is the island with the greatest plant diversity in the world

Researchers want to continue exploring the island's plants, which are in danger from loggers and farmers.

Nanoplastics can contaminate plants, making them smaller, shorter

Plastic waste could impact our crops.

Scientists create glowing plants using mushroom DNA and they are incredible

It's just like in Avatar.

Ecosystems with varied plant species are lusher, more efficient

Greater plant diversity benefits everyone in the ecosystem, a new study reports. Higher levels of plant diversity allow ecosystems to utilize more energy and more efficiently, new research found. Ecosystems with 60 or more plant species contained twice the amount of living biomass, on average, than ecosystems built on plant monocultures. This is the first […]

The Biodiversity Heritage Library made over 150,000 illustrations and 55 million pages of research free to download

I have the utmost respect for everyone who made this happen.

Climate change is causing more plants to grow higher in the Himalayans

Vegetation cover is increasing across four height brackets in the area.

More plants and trees could help the US reduce air pollution by 27% according to new research

I like plant.

Climate change might mean more rain, but less water for everybody

In a hotter future, plants will consume more water than they do today — which means a drier future despite the anticipated increases in precipitation. Climate heating is estimated to increase precipitation levels in places like the United States and Europe through the generation of more water vapor and weather pattern disruptions. However, humans may […]

People used marijuana in rituals 2,500 years ago

High up in the mountains of China.

Eat more plant protein for a longer and healthier life, new study concludes

In recent times, the human diet has changed substantially. We have access to an unprecedented variety of foods, yet meat consumption has increased dramatically: from 20 kilograms a year in 1961, to around 43 kilograms in 2014. However, recent studies have increasingly found that meat consumption can have negative health effects, and substitute meat for […]

How plants evolved to follow gravity

It's common sense that a plant's roots grow downward in the soil -- but it hasn't always been like this.

Cigarette butts are damaging plants, new study shows

Please don't litter cigarette butts!

Scientists modify plant mitochondrial DNA for the first time

This is huge news for the biotech industry.

Grazing animals drove the domestication of grain crops

This might solve a long-standing puzzle about plant domestication.

What is soil? Here's the inside scoop

The Earth's great recycle bin.

Humans started cooking and eating starch 120,000 years ago

Mankind has been cooking starches for a long, long time.

Invasive flowering species might overpower native ones because of warming climates

We flower in peace!

Medicinal plants used in the Civil War can stomp our modern antibiotic-resistant germs

Old tricks, new ways to implement them.

Slightly-tweaked microbe could create plastics from a common plant waste material

Lignin’ on a dream!

Grasses steal neighbors' genes to one-up other species

"They're OUR genes, tovarish plant" -- grasses.

Researchers design the first soft robot that moves like a plant

Which is to say, slowly!

Plants evolved to manipulate ants into defending them

A chicken and egg problem -- rehashed in an unlikely scenario.

Arctic plants are getting taller due to climate change -- which could fuel more climate change

Well, this is an unusual problem to have.

Earth's green history may help scientists spot plant life on alien planets

Thanks, plants!

Citizen science called upon to study liverworts and help quantify climate change

These plants could become our climate "canary in the coal mine".

Plants' climate-compensation systems will be overwhelmed by climate change

Climate change could cause an ecological break-down.

Plants colonized the land 500 million years ago -- much earlier than we thought

Plants might have moved on to the land 100 million years earlier than we thought.

Plants actively gauge their competition and switch strategies to one-up them

We all have to make ends meet. Even plants.

Human-use anesthetics also knock out plants, weirdly, teaching us a lot about such drugs

It's funny to realize that we've been using anesthetics for at least a century now, but we still don't *really* know why they work.

Botanic gardens might be our last shot to save endangered plants

The bad news is that we need this in the first place.