Hikers may be inadvertently helping to spread invasive plants across the largest national park in Australia's New South Wales, a study has found.

Biology - Ecology

Jul 25, 2011 5 / 5 (1) 2 |

A new artificial surface inspired by floating seeds, which could provide an alternative to the toxic paints currently used to prevent fouling on ship hulls, has been developed by German scientists.

Chemistry - Materials Science

Jul 04, 2011 5 / 5 (1) 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- A number of plants disperse their seeds in a rather artistic way: the seed capsules of the ice plant Delosperma nakurense, for instance, unfold lids over the seed compartments in the manner ...

Biology - Plants & Animals

Jun 21, 2011 not rated yet 0 |

Maintaining the world's threatened animal and plant species may rest with something as simple as knowing how far a bird can fly before it must answer nature's call.

Biology - Ecology

May 18, 2011 not rated yet 0

The genetic 'wiring' that helps a seed to decide on the perfect time to germinate has been revealed by scientists for the first time.

Biology - Biotechnology

May 18, 2011 not rated yet 0 |

A botanist at one of Kew's Millennium Seed Bank partners, the Kunming Institute of Botany, has rediscovered two populations of a primrose which was thought to be extinct in the wild.

Biology - Plants & Animals

May 05, 2011 3.7 / 5 (3) 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- The gamitana fish, a close relative of the flesh-eating piranha, mostly eats fruit and can carry seeds down the Amazon River as far as 3 miles (5 kilometers), reports a new Cornell study, ...

Biology - Ecology

Apr 19, 2011 5 / 5 (1) 0

It took Cornell breeder Margaret Smith years to perfect her new variety of organic corn but only six weeks to get its seeds licensed and available for sale.

Biology - Biotechnology

Apr 18, 2011 4 / 5 (1) 0

Mark Twain called it "the most delicious fruit known to man." But the cherimoya, or custard apple, and its close relations the sugar apple and soursop, also have lots of big, awkward seeds. Now new research by plant scientists ...

Biology - Biotechnology

Mar 14, 2011 4.7 / 5 (12) 2 |

Flax seeds can grow in radioactive soil near the contaminated site of the Chernobyl nuclear accident without much change to their proteins, experiments show. This study may point the way to growing crops in ...

Biology - Biotechnology

Mar 03, 2011 5 / 5 (2) 0 |

Biologists at the University of Leicester have published results of a new study into the intricacies of sex in flowering plants.

Biology - Cell & Microbiology

Feb 02, 2011 5 / 5 (1) 0 |

When filaree seeds ripen and burst, they are launched with an inbuilt spring. Scientists based at the University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard University have discovered that the inbuilt spring stores energy as the ...

Biology - Ecology

Jan 27, 2011 not rated yet 0

Plant biologists have discovered the last major element of the series of chemical signals that one class of plant hormones, called brassinosteroids, send from a protein on the surface of a plant cell to the cell's nucleus. ...

Biology - Cell & Microbiology

Jan 23, 2011 5 / 5 (1) 0 |

Researchers have uncovered the genetic basis of remarkable broad-spectrum resistance to a viral infection that, in some parts of the world, is the most important pathogen affecting leafy and arable brassica crops including ...

Biology - Biotechnology

Nov 18, 2010 not rated yet 0

Catapults are often associated with a medieval means of destruction, but for some plants, they are an effective way to launch new life. Dispersing seeds greater distances by catapulting can provide selective ...

Biology - Plants & Animals

Nov 03, 2010 4 / 5 (1) 0