Wicked Plants?

Toxic? Yes!….. But wicked?
Wicked (wik’id) adj. [Middle English wikke, evil, akin to Old English wicce, witch] “1. morally bad or wrong; acting or done with evil intent; depraved; iniquitous.” – Webster’s New World Dictionary
A wonderful new book Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln’s Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities by Amy Stewart, which I just [...]

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Plant Versus Plant: Some Plants Kill Other Plants Using Natural Herbicides

Alien Invader Uses Chemical Warfare
Spotted knapweed (photo left) is an invasive plant in North America.
It is native to Central Europe, east to central Russia, Caucasia, and western Siberia, but was accidentally introduced to North America through contaminated seed or ballast beginning in the late 1800’s.
Since then, spotted knapweed has spread throughout most of Canada and [...]

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Do Plants Have an Immune System?

It Depends on How You Define “Immune System”
Plants get sick. That is, they can be infected by pathogens.
But after hundreds of millions of years of pathogen attacks, plants are still here. So, they must have ways to get well after being sick.
Plants can defend themselves against disease-causing organisms (pathogens) such as viruses, bacteria, [...]

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Flowers: What You See Versus What the Bees See

The eye of a honey bee (photo credits).
Flowers look very different to insect pollinators, such as honey bees, compared to what we mammals see.
As the photo on the left shows, bees have compound eyes.
How a bee sees patterns as a result of its compound eyes is wonderfully illustrated at Andy Giger’s B-Eye website.
Like humans, bees [...]

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Plant Gas – How Humans, Insects, and Other Plants May Be Affected

Can humans measure photosynthesis on a global scale?
Since plants consume CO2 during photosynthesis, one way is to measure the relative amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) using satellites (click on photo at left for more info).
But plants also release CO2 as a product of respiration. This has confounded efforts to accurately measure photosynthesis at ecosystem [...]

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Evolutionary Benefits of “Hotness” to Chili Plants

Nearly 2 billion people will eat a chili pepper today, mainly because of their pungent flavor, that is, their peppery heat.
This perceived heat is caused by a chemical called capsaicin. Capsaicin and other capsaicinoids, found mainly in the pepper’s fleshy tissue which holds the seeds (see below right), activates heat-sensation-related receptors in the mammalian [...]

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“Talking” Plants: Stressed Plants and Wintergreen Lifesavers (and Aspirin)

What do wintergreen lifesavers have to do with stressed plants?
And what is a “stressed” plant, anyway?
A plant that’s “stressed” has usually been injured by the physical (cold, heat, drought) or biological (insects, disease-causing microbes) environment.
Such stress often causes the plant to produce an array of defensive compounds. Some of these compounds may help the plant [...]

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Sex Lives of Plants May Be Improved By Two Different Chemicals Produced By Flowers

Sex.
Animals do it.
And plants do it, too.
To enhance sex (cross-pollination), the flowers of some plants not only produce chemical pigments (colors) and sugary nectar to attract pollinators, but also volatile chemicals (scents) to do the same. In addition to these chemical attractants, flowers may also produce chemical repellents, such as nicotine (see below) to inhibit [...]

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