One way of improving the usefulness of a plant crop might come not from studying where the plant cells grow, but where they die.
Category - News in Focus
Alun Salt
The hidden diversity of Pitcairnia lanuginosa
Pitcairnia lanuginosa might look similar wherever you find it in South America, but hidden inside are some differences that can tell a tale about its past.
Salicylic acid-independent responses in PI4K mutants
Arabidopsis thaliana is the lab rat of plant sciences. Mutants tweaked in certain genes can show the effects of hormones on plants, but it can be hard to change one response without changing some others. How do plants...
Some trees can save effort when it comes to adding growth rings
Sometimes it’s easy to oversimplify plant anatomy. For example, trees don’t have blood. They have sap. It might be tempting to say that they carry sap in their xylem, the way we have blood in their veins...
BLINKing stomata: an optogenetic approach to improve plant growth and water use
Photosynthesis needs water. Guest blogger Maria Papanatsiou has a new way of increasing water efficiency in plants, enabling them to do more with less.
Guest Author
The poorly known Ethiopian crop Enset
Enset, a relative of the banana, provides the staple food for around 20 million Ethiopians, yet is barely known outside of the region.
Rapid changes in seed dispersal traits may modify plant responses to global change
When climatic or environmental conditions change, plant populations must either adapt to these new conditions, or track their niche via seed dispersal. Adaptation of plants to different abiotic environments has mostly...
William Salter
How Dracula orchids lure flies for pollination
With over 28000 species of orchid, it seems like there's an orchid for every niche. The Dracula orchid's niche is mimicking a mushroom.
When does Acacia koa know it’s time to grow up?
Sometimes the best strategy for a young plant is not the same as the best strategy for an old plant. Some heteroblastic plants can switch how they grow but what triggers this?
HydroShoot: a functional-structural plant model for simulating hydraulic structure, gas and energy exchange dynamics
A new model is able to predict the effect of training systems on grapevine gas-exchange dynamics under drought.
Rachel Shekar
Thermal Ecology to become a hot topic
We might think of flowers in terms of their colour and scent, but what about their temperature? A new review in Annals of Botany looks at the thermal ecology of flowers. In the paper Casper van der Kooi and colleagues...
The Hidden Value of Bud Banks
A Bud Bank is not just a Seed Bank in a different form. It can affect populations of plants in a considerably different way.
Thismia and its unusual number of specialist relationships.
Plants sometimes specialise. Catering for a specific partner can ensure a reliable source of food or pollination. At the same time, relying on that partner limits your adaptability. A new study by Guo and colleagues, A...
What happens when plants dominate lakes?
What is life like in a lake? Is it much like life on the shore, but wetter? Or are the environmental challenges significantly different?
