Latest Plant sexuality Stories

The innermost secrets of fire's role in the rebirth and renewal of forests and grasslands are being revealed in research that has identified plant growth promoters and inhibitors in smoke. In the latest discovery about smoke's secret life, an international team of scientists are reporting discovery of a plant growth inhibitor in smoke. The study appears in ACS's Journal of Natural Products, a monthly publication."Smoke plays an intriguing role in promoting the germination of seeds of...

Feature: Wards of the rosesDoes flower water harbor potentially deadly bacteria? Do bedside blooms compete with patients for oxygen? Do bouquets pose a health and safety risk around medical equipment?These are some of the reasons given by many hospital wards in the UK to ban, or at least discourage, bedside bouquets. But is this anxiety justified, and what do patients feel about flower policies?To find out more, Giskin Day and Naiome Carter of Imperial College London surveyed the literature...

NEW YORK, Nov. 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Reportlinker.com announces that a new market research report is available in its catalogue: Special Research on Vegetable Seed Market of China in 2009 http://www.reportlinker.com/p0165564/Special-Research-on-Vegetable-Seed-Market-of-China-in-2009.html As the primary component of planting cost, seeds are at the upstream of the industry of produce, and competitiveness of the seed market decides the initiative of competition in agriculture. China is a big...

Researchers work on part of Darwin's 'abominable mystery'Approximately 120-130 million years ago, one of the most significant events in the history of the Earth occurred: the first flowering plants, or angiosperms, arose. In the late 1800s, Darwin referred to their development as an "abominable mystery." To this day, scientists are still challenged by this "mystery" of how angiosperms originated, rapidly diversified, and rose to dominance. (See the January 2009 issue of...

The appearance of many species of flowering plants on Earth, and especially their relatively rapid dissemination during the Cretaceous (approximately 100 million years ago) can be attributed to their capacity to transform the world to their own needs. In an article in Ecology Letters, Wageningen ecologists Frank Berendse and Marten Scheffer postulate that flowering plants changed the conditions during the Cretaceous period to suit themselves. The researchers have consequently provided an...

As a result of stronger winds caused by global warming, seeds and pollen are being carried over longer distances. An increase in temperature of only a couple of degrees may increase the dispersal of plants in Northern forests and the spread of plant species into forest clearings after felling or forest fires.University of Helsinki researcher Anna Kuparinen headed the international research into the impact of global warming on seed and pollen dispersal. The goal was to learn whether global...

Flowers Help Moms De-stress and Offer a Proven Pick-Me-Up for Mother's Day BOGOTA, Colombia, April 16 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- For over a hundred years, mothers in the United States have been honored on Mother's Day, traditionally celebrated with beautiful bouquets of flowers. New research suggests that the positive power flowers have on feelings may be the real reason mothers prefer to be given beautiful blooms on their special day. According to a behavioral research study conducted by...

Canadian researchers say they've determined the scent of grapevine flowers comes from pollen grains stored in the anthers, not just the petals. University of British Columbia scientists from the school's Wine Research Center and Michael Smith Laboratories were studying grapes used to produce Cabernet Sauvignon from British Columbia's Okanagan region when they identified a gene that produces and regulates fragrance from the vines' tiny clusters of green blossoms. This was a surprise in...

U.S. scientists say they've determined the seeds of some tree species can survive for more than 30 years before germinating -- 10 times longer than thought. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientist Tom Brown and University of Illinois Professor James Dalling said they measured the amount of carbon 14 in seeds of Panamanian rain forest trees Croton billbergianus (Euphorbiaceae), Trema micrantha (Celtidaceae) and Zanthoxylum ekmannii ( Rutaceae). They discovered the seeds survived in...

Purdue University researchers have determined a process that regulates activity of genes that control seed germination and seedling development.Mike Hasegawa, the Bruno C. Moser Distinguished Professor of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, and Kenji Miura, a former Purdue postdoctoral researcher and now an assistant professor at Tsukuba University in Japan, discovered the step involved in keeping seeds from germinating in adverse conditions such as freezing temperatures or drought, a...