exploring the inner workings of plants
Posted in Secondary Compounds on Jul 4th, 2009
Toxic? Yes!….. But wicked? Wicked (wik’id) adj. [Middle English wikke, evil, akin to Old English wicce, witch] “1. morally bad or wrong; acting or done with evil intent; depraved; iniquitous.” – Webster’s New World Dictionary A wonderful new book Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln’s Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities by Amy Stewart, which [...]
Posted in Secondary Compounds on May 23rd, 2009
Alien Invader Uses Chemical Warfare Spotted knapweed (photo left) is an invasive plant in North America. It is native to Central Europe, east to central Russia, Caucasia, and western Siberia, but was accidentally introduced to North America through contaminated seed or ballast beginning in the late 1800′s. Since then, spotted knapweed has spread throughout most [...]
Posted in Plant Signaling, Plant Stress, Secondary Compounds on Apr 23rd, 2009
It Depends on How You Define “Immune System” Plants get sick. That is, they can be infected by pathogens. But after hundreds of millions of years of pathogen attacks, plants are still here. So, they must have ways to get well after being sick. Plants can defend themselves against disease-causing organisms (pathogens) such as viruses, [...]
Posted in Flowering, Secondary Compounds on Nov 30th, 2008
The eye of a honey bee (photo credits). Flowers look very different to insect pollinators, such as honey bees, compared to what we mammals see. As the photo on the left shows, bees have compound eyes. How a bee sees patterns as a result of its compound eyes is wonderfully illustrated at Andy Giger’s B-Eye [...]
Posted in Photosynthesis, Plant Stress, Secondary Compounds on Nov 24th, 2008
Can humans measure photosynthesis on a global scale? Since plants consume CO2 during photosynthesis, one way is to measure the relative amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) using satellites (click on photo at left for more info). But plants also release CO2 as a product of respiration. This has confounded efforts to accurately measure photosynthesis [...]
Posted in Secondary Compounds on Sep 26th, 2008
Nearly 2 billion people will eat a chili pepper today, mainly because of their pungent flavor, that is, their peppery heat. This perceived heat is caused by a chemical called capsaicin. Capsaicin and other capsaicinoids, found mainly in the pepper’s fleshy tissue which holds the seeds (see below right), activates heat-sensation-related receptors in the mammalian [...]
Posted in Plant Stress, Secondary Compounds on Sep 19th, 2008
What do wintergreen lifesavers have to do with stressed plants? And what is a “stressed” plant, anyway? A plant that’s “stressed” has usually been injured by the physical (cold, heat, drought) or biological (insects, disease-causing microbes) environment. Such stress often causes the plant to produce an array of defensive compounds. Some of these compounds may [...]
Posted in Flowering, Secondary Compounds on Sep 5th, 2008
Sex. Animals do it. And plants do it, too. To enhance sex (cross-pollination), the flowers of some plants not only produce chemical pigments (colors) and sugary nectar to attract pollinators, but also volatile chemicals (scents) to do the same. In addition to these chemical attractants, flowers may also produce chemical repellents, such as nicotine (see [...]
HowPlantsWork Weblog
exploring the inner workings of plants
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