Earth's Internet & Natural Networking: Mycorrhizal Fungi run the Largest Mining Operation in the World Up to 85% of plants depend on fungi to survive. Plants and fungi depend on each other for nutrient cycling and water absorption "If you sift the mineral particles from conifer forest soil, wash them, and examine them under a microscope, you will discover a startling detail: tiny tunnels, three to ten micrometers across" "The tunnels curve and branch and sometimes more than one pierces the same particle. Jennifer Frazer There was a nicely done article which came out on the journal Scientific American by science writer, Jennifer Frazer, who has degrees in biology, plant pathology and Mycology. "The tunnels seem like they were made by something … alive. She then provided another beautiful illustration of something that the average person can actually see feel and touch. "But why would a fungus tunnel into a rock? "There is a precedent: lichens. Sure enough. "But the shafts in the photos at the top of the page were found nowhere near a lichen or a boulder. "Fungal mining has many advantages.
How We Unwittingly Bred The Phytonutrients Out Of Our Food Studies published within the past 15 years show that much of our produce is relatively low in phytonutrients, which reduce the risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and dementia. The loss of these beneficial nutrients did not begin 50 or 100 years ago. Unwittingly, we have been stripping phytonutrients from our diet since we stopped foraging for wild plants some 10,000 years ago and became farmers. 16 Of The Most Magnificent Trees In The World How do I love thee, tree? Let me count the ways; you change carbon dioxide into the oxygen we breathe, you sequester carbon, and you provide shelter for countless critters. There are many reasons for which we should all be tree-hugging hippies, but within the scope of this article, all we’ll focus on is how amazing some of them look. Granted, not all of these amazing beautiful trees are trees (the Wisteria is a vine, Rhododendrons are shrubs, and bamboo technically belongs to the grass family), but we’ll give them a pass because they are amazing, huge and beautiful. So once you step outside and take a breath of fresh air, hug the nearest tree and say thank you! If you know of an amazing tree not on this list, you can submit it at the bottom of this post. 125+ Year Old Rhododendron “Tree” In Canada This huge 125-year-oldold rhododendron is technically not a tree – most are considered to be shrubs. 144-Year-Old Wisteria In Japan Image credits: tungnam.com.hk Wind-Swept Trees In New Zealand
Sheep-Eating Plant Blooms For First Time; Puya Chilensis Started Growing 15 Years Ago (PHOTOS) An exotic "sheep-eating" plant, so-called because it kills and "eats" sheep, has bloomed for the first time at the Royal Horticultural Society's Garden Wisley in the U.K. The plant, known formally as Puya chilensis, has been at the garden for 15 years. In that time, it has reached a height of 10 feet and grown its signature base of razor-sharp, hook-shaped spines. Per a BBC report, in its native habitat of Chile, the plant uses the spines to ensnare sheep and other small animals. After they starve to death and decompose, the animals nourish the plant through the soil, acting as a gruesome fertilizer. Speaking of the plant's first-ever flower, Cara Smith, a horticulturist at the Garden Wisley attributed the success to keeping the plant nourished on a liquid fertilizer. Smith added, "[P]arents coming along with small children [to see the flower] don’t need to worry about the plant devouring their little ones. PHOTOS of Garden Wisley's sheep-eating plant and others that have flowered:
Plants Exhibit The Same Senses As Humans And See, Touch, Smell, Hear and Even Taste By: Daniel Chamovitz, Director of the Manna Center for Plant Biosciences at Tel Aviv University In Israel, Guest Contributor Have you ever wondered what the grass under your feet feels, what an apple tree smells, or a marigold sees? Plants stimulate our senses constantly, but most of us never consider them as sensory beings too. In fact senses are extremely important to plants. Whatever life throws at them, they remain rooted to the spot – they cannot migrate in search of food, escape a swarm of locusts or find shelter from a storm. Plants have scientifically been show to draw alternative sources of energy from other plants. What do plants see? Studies have shown that plants bend to the light as if hungry for the sun’s rays, which is exactly what they are. We now know they do this using phototropins – light receptors in the membranes of cells in the plant’s tip. Plants see red light using receptors in their leaves called phytochromes. Plants live in a very tactile world. Source:
Studying Seemingly Immortal Lichens, in a Place for the Dead In this bucolic cemetery, steps from the headquarters of Harvard’s research forest, she was pondering mortality. But she wasn’t thinking about the Frenches. She was thinking about lichens. Pale green and vaguely ruffled, like calcified doilies, lichens grow all over the tombstones and the old stone walls that fringe properties in this part of the world. For eight years, Dr. Biologists call it senescence: the grim reality of decline with age. Lichens are not individuals but tiny ecosystems, composed of one main fungus, a group of algae and an assortment of smaller fungi and bacteria. Once attached, they hardly lead a carefree life. While lichens are communities, Dr. The clear exception is yeast, a single-cell fungus that does senesce and that researchers use as a model to study aging. No one has ever proved that, though, or even collected much data. Does that mean Armillaria and many of the world’s other fungi are not aging? “What you know is based on the organisms you study,” she said.
Plants Know They Are Being Eaten Melia Robinson/Business Insider Vegetarians and vegans pay heed: New research shows plants know when they're being eaten. And they don't like it. That plants possess an intelligence is not new knowledge, but according to Modern Farmer, a new study from the University of Missouri shows plants can sense when they are being eaten and send out defense mechanisms to try to stop it from happening. The study was carried out on thale cress, or Arabidopsis as it's known scientifically, which is closely related to broccoli, kale, mustard greens, and other siblings of the brassica family and is popular for science experiments. It is commonly used in experiments because it was the first plant to have its genome sequenced, and scientists are intimately familiar with how it works. The researchers controlled the experiment by coming up with other vibrations that simulated other natural vibrations like wind noise that the plant might encounter. The results?
African dust once fertilized the Everglades Numerous water lilies and other aquatic flowers once dotted the grass carpets of Florida’s Everglades thanks to nutrient-bearing dust from Africa. Windblown sediment from the Sahara Desert landed in Florida around 4,600 years ago and enriched its nutrient-poor wetlands, scientists report October 7 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. But an abrupt shift in winds around 2,800 years ago downsized the dust dump and stifled the nutrient flow, the authors suggest. The discovery of airborne fertilizer revises scientists’ understanding of the history and workings of the Everglades. Glaser and colleagues pieced together the Everglades’ history by dating layers of a 99-centimeter-long mud core from a swamp in the northeastern Everglades and then correlating the findings with climate records. “The biggest surprise was when I started to look at the cores in the lab, and I started to see these large quartz grains,” Glaser says.
This Is How Our Favourite Foods Look In Their Natural Habitats (Photos) Could you recognize a cashew tree in the wild, or a black pepper vine? How about a mango tree? We all know what an apple tree looks like, and can recognize a cabbage patch when we see one, but many of our favourite foods appear vastly different in their natural forms, as they go through a remarkable transformation to get from field to table. The below photo series features some of our favourite foods as they appear in nature. Let the below images show you just how miraculous nature is and serve as a reminder that every piece of food you enjoy is a gift of the earth — and the product of hard work! Almonds flickr.com Bananas asergeev.com Black Pepper pixgood.com Brussels Sprouts flickr.com Cacao eco-turizm.net airshipflamel.com Cashews reddit.com Cinnamon cchorita.blogspot.ru Coffee wikipedia.org inforegion.pe Kiwi organiceconomist.blogspot.ru organiceconomist.blogspot.ru Mango ecocircuitospanama.wordpress.com Peanuts imgur.com flickr.com Pineapple vulgarfractions.wordpress.com Pistachios geolocation.ws Saffron sfw.so