exploring the inner workings of plants
Posted in Plant Development on Jul 20th, 2009
Walking on the Moon On July 20, 1969 Apollo 11 crew members Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first humans to walk on the moon. With the 40th anniversary of this first moon landing currently in news, I thought it would be interesting to investigate what’s known about the effects, if any, of the [...]
Posted in CO2 on Jul 2nd, 2009
No Controversy Here Despite the denials of global warming caused by increased atmospheric CO2 from the scientifically ignorant or from the oil/coal corporations (or from politicians bought or rented by these corporations), there is one thing they can not deny. The level of atmospheric CO2 on Earth has been steadily increasing for the past century [...]
Posted in Asexual Reproduction on Jun 8th, 2009
Send In The Clones Few plants generate such annoyance among suburban homeowners with immaculate lawnscapes as the common dandelion (in North America, most likely Taraxacum officinale). Despite efforts to eradicate them using chemical warfare (see here for info on such herbicides), the dandelions exhibit a remarkable ability to proliferate. And they do so likely because [...]
Posted in Plant Metabolism on May 9th, 2009
The Last Roundup? The herbicide that most Americans are likely familiar with is Roundup®. Unlike the auxin-based herbicides I discussed in the previous post, Roundup® is not a selective herbicide. That is, it usually kills all green plants (except if the plant is Roundup Ready® or if the plant is a naturally Roundup®-resistant “superweed” – [...]
Posted in Plant Hormones on May 1st, 2009
What Do Suburban Lawns and the Vietnam War Have in Common? Answer: The herbicide 2,4-D. You may be familiar with this herbicide as an active ingredient in “Weed ‘n Feed®”, “Weed B Gon MAX®”, Turf Builder® With Weed Control”, etc.. During the Vietnam War, it was an active ingredient in Agent Orange. On lawns it’s [...]
Posted in Plant Biological Clock, Plant Development on Jan 25th, 2009
How Do We Know Plants Can Tell Time? The daily opening and closing of flowers and the rhythmic leaf movement of some plants suggests, even to the casual observer, that plants have an internal clock. To more careful observers, such as Carl Linnaeus and Charles Darwin, the evidence was clear that plants can tell time. [...]
Posted in Plant Development, Plant Hormones on Dec 30th, 2008
The Power of Movement in Plants Most of a flowering plant’s development and physiology is regulated by plant hormones. The first of these chemical signals to be isolated and characterized was auxin. In the 1930′s, after the initial discovery of auxin by Frits Went in 1928, he, Kenneth Thimann, and Folke Skoog showed that, in [...]
Posted in Plant Cell Walls, Plant Development, Plant Stress on Dec 21st, 2008
Devil-may-care and out-of-control plants. A couple of reports in the science news this week seem to suggest that one way to cope with global climate change may be unbridled plant growth. One has to do with the discovery of a cellular regulator for the synthesis of cellulose by plant cells. The other involves plants’ natural [...]
Posted in Plant Hormones on Dec 14th, 2008
What do a fungal disease of rice, dwarf plants, flowering, and beer have in common? Answer: They all may involve the action of the plant hormone gibberellin, a.k.a. gibberellic acid (GA). Let me explain….. This plant hormone was first discovered by Japanese scientists working on a rice disease called bakanae caused by the fungus Gibberella [...]
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 [...]
HowPlantsWork Weblog
exploring the inner workings of plants
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