The Baobabs – Writer and photographer Ron Emmons wrote a piece on the “bizarre baobabs”, as he calls them, a tree native to the deserts of Australia, Africa and Madagascar. Sometimes called the “upside-down tree”, this tree has the distinct appearance of having roots in...

If leaves could talk – Plants that live on land have tiny pores on the surface of their leaves that allow for gas exchange, somewhat like little mouths. Appearing in the Feb. 1 issue of Nature is news of the identity of two genes responsible for development of these pores. The genes, creatively...

Giant flowers – The raffiesia flower, also known as the ‘corpse flower’, grows up to 1 meter (3ft) wide and smells like rotting flesh. Interestingly, the parasitic raffiesia plant is a relative of plants whose flower size is only a few millimeters wide, which suggests that the raffiesia...

Hunting big game – Amateur naturalists Chris Atkins and Michael Taylor identified what are perhaps the tallest trees in the world. Located in the Humboldt Redwoods State Park in California, these trees are over 370 feet high and up to 2,200 years old. Taylor and Atkins, armed with a laser range...

Herbicide resistant weeds cause trouble in the cotton industry – Cotton farmers are facing a tough foe: a very stubborn weed called Amaranthus palmeri, a type of pig weed. The problem? Amaranthus grows quickly (and up to 10 feet tall!) and resists the most common commercially available weed killers...