Do plants invest more in a live-fast and die-young strategy, or take it slow and steady? Botanists have found that the appearance above the ground might not reflect what's happening in the roots.
Secondary growth of the roots of annual dicots has functional significance with regards to soil resource acquisition and transport, interactions with soil organisms and carbon sequestration.
Roots are critical for plants to find water and nutrients. They can also be expensive to grow, so a plant needs to send them in the right direction. How do they do this? A new paper by Daniel von Wangenheim and...
Flora: Inside the Secret World of Plants by DK [Dorling Kindersley] with contribution by Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, 2018. Dorling Kindersley. Dorling Kindersley’s Flora: Inside the secret world of plants [hereafter...
There’s been plenty of media attention on the threat plastics, especially microplastics, pose to animal life. A paper in New Phytologist suggests that there’s more to this. Plants might be suffering from...
How will plants respond to rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere? Botanists at BIFoR, the Birmingham Institute for Forest Research have gone underground to find some of the answers.
The more I learn about roots, the more amazing they appear. Not only do they provide essential support for, and anchorage of, the aerial, above-ground, parts of the plant, they are the prime organs for abstracting water...