Can Crops’ Wild Relatives Save Troubled Agriculture?
Cultivating a limited number of crops reduced the genetic diversity of plants, endangering harvests. Seed collectors hope to fix it by finding the plants’ wild cousins.
Three Ways to Turn Your Apartment into a Sustainable Garden
Even the smallest city dwelling has enough space for a mini-meadow or a few flower pots.
The Beaufort Botanist and Her “Innocent Diversion”
Despite the twelve volume herbarium she created, this seventeenth-century scientist earned little recognition.
The Accidental Invention of Terrariums
Victorian London became obsessed with Ward's cases, which protected plants from the city's toxic pollution -- and piqued peoples' imaginations.
The New Victims of Climate Change: Plants, Parasites, and Pregnant Women
The recent series of hurricanes has demonstrated, climate change is no longer a nebulous futuristic menace, but an existential threat.
Plants Know When They Are Being Eaten. (And They Fight Back.)
Plants have long employed a variety of defensive strategies against herbivores, but the scope and sophistication of these defenses is still being understood.
The Delicious Origins of the Domesticated Blueberry
Frederick Coville and Elizabeth White, two strangers, domesticated the blueberry together. They valued beauty and worked to support local communities.
“The Culture of the Copy”: Victorians’ Obsession With Wax Flowers
Wax flowers were a major obsession of Victorian women, allowing them to combine art and industry.
Got Plants? You May Also Have Diamonds!
The use of plants as indicators for specific environmental conditions
Alfred C. Kinsey On Gall Wasps and Edible Plants
Alfred Kinsey was a professor of entomology before becoming a sexologist.