Plants can’t really choose whose pollen they get covered with. All kinds of pollinators bring all kinds of pollen to the party. And with it they bring the burden, to the plant, of figuring out which pollen to allow in and which to send away. But as it turns out, plants know just which molecular bouncers to use, to keep the party going.… Read more
How not to get murdered? Will plants save you? No. If you ever get murdered, Tegan has some no legally binding advice for you. Apart from life-saving murder prevention tips we have a new paper on wheat research for you and also a favourite plant.… Read more
A.k.a, How gassy flowers create fumes as a way of talking to themselves.… Read more
What is the biggest single celled organism out there? And how large is it exactly? Today, we have a contestant for the biggest single celled photosynthetic organism out there. Can you guess what it is?… Read more
Here’s the thing. Love is love. Diversity is essential. Science should be free of bullshit.… Read more
Joram took an electric scooter through the best city in the world to join Tegan in her kitchen for yet another episode about plants and pipettes and things that are fun.
Tegan’s paper: Weits, D. A., Kunkowska, A. B., Kamps, N. C. W., Portz, K. M. S., Packbier, N. K., Nemec Venza, Z., … Licausi, F. (2019). An apical hypoxic niche sets the pace of shoot meristem activity. Nature, 569(7758), 714–717.
The root article we published last week (or the week before if you’re listening to this one week later (don’t listen to this later than that or this statement will be inaccurate)).… Read more
Most people use instagram to follow celebs and look at highly staged photos of people enjoying their morning cup of cold brew on top of mountain in their underwear at sunset. Us plant nerds, however, like to look at plants.
And if you’re anything like us, you might have noticed a trend – marbled monstera plants, fancy ficuses with white borders, and pale or patterned philodendrons. These diverse beauties are out to show that being different from the other plants only makes them more fascinating.… Read more
Friday, Friday we get down on Friday, Saturday is the next day and Sunday comes afterwards! Oh, and a new podcast episode. This time, we were a little bit rambly but we managed to cover everything important. And the windows was also open because we had like four million degrees inside, scientifically speaking.… Read more
Plants are better than you.
They’re better at fixing carbon (hello photosynthesis). They’re better at attracting bees. They’re generally just a whole lot prettier than you, even this guy And, relevant for today’s post, they’re better than you at surviving laser attacks… providing that the lasers only damage a few cells at a time, and the plants get given a somewhat long time to recover between each shot.… Read more
You already know that plant scientists like to do some pretty cruel things to plants. We cut out bits out of their genes, steal their metabolites to try to fix our problems, lock their cells into tiny droplets of oil… the list goes on.
But now, new research suggests that plant scientists cause plants a whole lot of stress, just by growing them.… Read more