What is it that makes a plant get up and stay up? A new review looks at the creation of secondary cell walls. These microscopic features are the key to understanding the architecture of the plants we see around us.
A common complaint of food, for many reasons, is that it ‘tastes like sawdust’. Although that description is subjective – the food doesn’t contain sawdust even if its taste may suggest otherwise,* there may be more than...
The Equisetopsida emerged in the Upper Devonian (>370 mya), and Equisetum (horsetails) may be the oldest surviving vascular plant genus. Horsetails and the Poales are the only plants possessing the hemicellulose (1...
Much of plant biomass is in roots but we know much less about root properties that affect decomposition rates than we do about above-ground tissues. Aulen and Shipley measure decomposition rates of 17 species of trees...