Plants
clock | October 6, 2006Considering that circadian clocks were first discovered in plants, and studied almost exclusively in plants for almost a century before people started looking at animals in the early 20th century, it is somewhat surprising that the molecular aspects of the circadian rhythm generation mechanisms have lagged behind those in insects, vertebrates, fungi and bacteria. It is always nice to see a paper reporting a discovery of a new plant clock gene:
New function for protein links plant s circadian rhythm to its light-detection mechanism:
Plants set their clocks by detecting the light cycle, and…
clock | September 20, 2006Team Describes Unique Desert Cloud Forest:
Trees that live in an odd desert forest in Oman have found an unusual way to water themselves by extracting moisture from low-lying clouds, MIT scientists report.
In an area that is characterized mostly by desert, the trees have preserved an ecological niche because they exploit a wispy-thin source of water that only occurs seasonally, said Elfatih A.B. Eltahir, professor of civil and environmental engineering, and former MIT graduate student Anke Hildebrandt.
After studying the Oman site, they also expressed concern that the unusual forest could be…
clock | August 13, 2006You have until August 29th to write a post about trees, or a particular tree, or a picture of a really cool tree, or a poem about a tree...and send it to Burning Silo for the next edition of the Festival of the Trees
clock | August 11, 2006Well, this Friday Weird Sex Blogging is not going to be so unique. After all, Janet and Zuzu have already blogged about it, but who can resist a phallic-looking, rotten-meat smelling, fly-attracting flower! And it is not a B-grade movie on the sci-fi channel. This is real! The Titan Arum (Amorphophallus titanum), in all its 3m tall glory is about to start stinking up the greenhouse at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden (follow the flowering on the blog or watch the flowering web-cam here) :
clock | August 1, 2006The second Festival of the Trees is up on Roundrock Journal. It's big and beautiful!
clock | July 21, 2006
Some plants do not want to get eaten. They may grow in places difficult to approach, they may look unappetizing, or they may evolve vile smells. Some have a fuzzy, hairy or sticky surface, others evolve thorns. Animals need to eat those plants to survive and plants need not be eaten by animals to survive, so a co-evolutionary arms-race leads to ever more bizzare adaptations by plants to deter the animals and ever more ingenious adaptations by animals to get around the deterrents.
One of the most efficient ways for a plant to deter a herbivore is to divert one of its existing biochemical…
clock | July 1, 2006The first edition of the Festival of the Trees, the blog carnival of tree lovers, is up on Via Negativa. It is huge and beautiful!
clock | June 26, 2006
The persistence of circadian rhythmicity during long bouts of hibernation in mammals has been a somewhat controversial topic in the literature. While some studies suggest that circadian clock is active during hibernation, other studies dispute this. Apparently, the truth is somewhere in-between - it differs between species:
Not all hibernating animals retain apparent circadian rhythmicity during the hibernation season. Whereas some species, such as bats and golden-mantled ground squirrels, maintain circadian rhythmicity in Tb throughout the hibernation season when held in constant…