Home / Resources and Writings / Weblog / February 2005
Plants of Washington Image Collection
Category(-ies): Botanical Resources , Herbaria
The WTU Herbarium at the University of Washington’s Burke Museum has created a website that features an image database of the plants of Washington state. WTU’s Plants of Washington Image Collection contains over 5700 photos of plants found in the state, organized by family, genus, scientific name, and common name.
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Posted by Eric La Fountaine at 1:22 PM
Transgenic Mustard Cleans Soil
Category(-ies): Novel Uses of Plants
Researchers have completed the first field trials of a transgenic Indian mustard designed to pull selenium contamination from soil. Extra genes were added to produce plants rich in enzymes that cause the roots to take up selenium. Three strains of mustard, each producing a different enzyme, and a wild strain were compared in the field test. The altered strains took up more than four times the amount of the contaminant from the soil.
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Posted by Eric La Fountaine at 4:33 PM
The Lethal Speed of the Venus Flytrap
Category(-ies): Plant Discoveries
The gift of a Venus flytrap led researcher, Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan, to wonder how a plant was able to move so fast. The leaves of the plant can close on an insect in one-tenth of a second. Mahadevan, who studies ordinary physical phenomena, devised an experiment to reveal the mechanics behind the feat.
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Posted by Eric La Fountaine at 2:47 PM
Developing New Fruit Crops for Market Introduction
Category(-ies): Plants, Food and Medicine
Few people had sampled a kiwi fruit in North America before 1970. Now the popular fruit is common in markets. The USDA's Agricultural Research Service is experimenting with minor crops to develop them for a wider market. There are over 600 plants grown in the US defined as minor crops, those grown on 300,000 acres or less. Researchers are also looking at major crops from other regions for possible use in North America.
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Posted by Eric La Fountaine at 2:06 PM
The Provenance of Plants
Category(-ies): Plant Conservation
Growing native plants to promote conservation is very popular, but botanists are concerned about the origin of the plants. The habitat range of any native plant varies. If specimens from one region of the habitat are promoted, the genes of that particular population may supplant those of the local population. Subtle genetic differences that aid the plant's survival in other areas of the range may be lost.
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Posted by Eric La Fountaine at 12:23 PM
World's Highest Botanical Garden Opens
Category(-ies): Other Botanical Gardens , Plant Conservation
What is believed to be the highest-altitude botanic garden in the world recently opened in Yunnan Province in southern China. The Lijiang Alpine Botanical Garden was built jointly by the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and the Kunming Plant Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Elevations in the garden range from 2,680 metres to 4,300 metres.
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Posted by Eric La Fountaine at 4:14 PM
The Human Flower Project
Category(-ies): Botanical Art , Botanical Resources , Sources of Botanical News
Flowers play an important role in the lives of people. They are prominent in art and cultural rituals; when words are inadequate, flowers help communicate feelings. Julie Ardery has created a website that tracks human involvement with flowers: the Human Flower Project.
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Posted by Eric La Fountaine at 4:12 PM
The People Behind the FNA
Category(-ies): Botanical Resources , Herbaria , Plant Explorers
Botanists from around the world are working on a massive project to record the vegetative history of North America (north of Mexico) and Greenland. They are examining two centuries of floristic literature and herbarium specimens, and supplementing the results with modern-day field work. The conclusion will be thirty volumes of descriptive and biological information on the over twenty thousand native and naturalized plants of the continental region.
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Posted by Eric La Fountaine at 4:44 PM
Plastic from Oranges
Category(-ies): Novel Uses of Plants , Plant Discoveries
Researchers at Cornell University have created a plastic from carbon dioxide and a compound extracted from orange peel. Most plastics use petroleum as the source for chemical building blocks. This new plastic could be made from renewable resources and bind the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, in the process.
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Posted by Eric La Fountaine at 11:35 AM
The Value of Wild Relatives for Domestic Crops
Category(-ies): Plant Conservation , Plants, Food and Medicine
Beloved by gardeners for their big dazzling yellow blooms, sunflowers are also an important oilseed and food crop. Agricultural Research Scientists have been collecting wild Helianthus species since 1976. The specimens are evaluated by the ARS Sunflower Research Unit staff for potential economically important traits before being stored at the ARS National Plant Germplasm System.
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Posted by Eric La Fountaine at 4:30 PM
All-America Selections - Winners in the Garden
Category(-ies): Plants in the Landscape
The 2005 All-America Selections Flower Award Winners are Gaillardia aristata 'Arizona Sun', Vinca 'First Kiss Blueberry', and Zinnia F1 'Magellan Coral'. Vegetable Awards went to Eggplant F1 'Fairy Tale', Winter Squash F1 'Bonbon', and the delectable Tomato F1 'Sugary'. These new garden introductions have been chosen for their superior performance in side-by-side comparison trials.
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Posted by Eric La Fountaine at 4:58 PM
Exploring A British Columbian Wild Island
Category(-ies): Plant Explorers
While teaching a course on Cortes Island, ecologist and writer, Don Gayton became intrigued by the small uninhabited islet of Mitlenatch. Climate and habitat of islands in the Georgia Strait can be quite different from the nearby coastal mainland. To satisfy his curiosity about the ecology of the islet he only needed to pay a small price.
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Posted by Eric La Fountaine at 4:45 PM
Phragmites Database Completed
Category(-ies): Botanical Resources , Invasive Plants
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) has developed a database on the distribution of native and alien races of common reed, Phragmites australis in Canada. The database is accessible through the Canadian Biodiversity Information Facility (CBIF) web portal, a resource for biodiversity study with a network of information on geographically-referenced specimens.
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Posted by Eric La Fountaine at 10:33 AM
