Plants

  1. Plants

    How a tomato plant foils a dreaded vampire vine

    Tomatoes can foil a dodder plant attack by getting scared and scabbing over.

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  2. Plants

    Sneaky virus helps plants multiply, creating more hosts

    Plant virus makes hosts more attractive to pollinators, ensuring future virus-susceptible plants.

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  3. Plants

    Internal clock helps young sunflowers follow the sun

    A circadian clock helps sunflowers follow the sun’s daily path across the sky

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  4. Plants

    Why a parasitic vine can’t take a bite out of tomatoes

    Cultivated tomatoes fend off parasitic vines as they would microbes.

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  5. Animals

    Organisms age in myriad ways — and some might not even bother

    There is great variety in how animals and plants deteriorate (or don’t) over time.

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  6. Climate

    Warming alters mountain plant’s sex ratios

    Global warming has different effects on male and female plants. Tracking sex ratio shifts could be a fast signal of climate change, researchers say.

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  7. Plants

    ‘Lab Girl’ invites readers into hidden world of plants

    In Lab Girl, geobiologist Hope Jahren reveals secret lives of plants — and scientists.

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  8. Life

    Cities create accidental experiments in plant, animal evolution

    To look for evolution in human-scale time, pick a city and watch a lizard. Or some clover.

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  9. Plants

    Scary tomato appears to bleed

    A new species of Australian bush tomato bleeds when injured and turns bony in old age.

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  10. Plants

    Venus flytraps use defensive genes for predation

    Genetic analysis suggests that Venus flytraps repurposed plant defenses against herbivores to live the carnivore life.

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  11. Plants

    Here’s what a leaf looks like during a fatal attack of bubbles

    Office equipment beats synchrotrons in showing how drought lets air bubbles kill the water-carrier network of veins in plant leaves.

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  12. Plants

    Nightshade plants bleed sugar as a call to ants for backup

    Bittersweet nightshade produces sugary wound goo to lure in ant protectors that eat herbivores, researchers have found.

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