Bee-Made Flower Nests
This amazingly beautiful cocoon is made from carefully layered flower petals. The creator? A bee. Specifically, the Osmia bee. Four different species of this bee, Osmia avosetta, Osmia lunata, Osmia...
View ArticleBotanic Superlatives: The Fastest Flower
As a performance piece, the pageant of botanic superlatives is more like a tableau vivant than any Olympic games; most competitions of time are measured in days and centuries, and the actors are...
View ArticleBee Season
Honeybees, brought to the Americas from Europe in 1622, have decreased in population because of colony collapse disorder.In Magazine Issue: March 2011read more
View ArticleBotanic Superlatives: The Best Kisser
An unfertilized flower with open lips (left); the lips close when stimulated (right).Flowers are nothing if not experts in the art of seduction. While their methods are perhaps more subtle than those...
View ArticleArt + Botany: Karl Blossfeldt
Main photo (L-R): Wolfsbane, Monkshood (Aconitum napellus); Winter horsetail (Equisetum hiemale); American maidenhair fern (Adiantum pedatum)The plant never lapses into mere arid functionalism; it...
View ArticleSupporting Your Roots
See also: All About Roots1. Forget the chemicals. Organic soils encourage a greater balance and diversity of microbes to serve plants and better control pathogens. 2. Add organic matter. Compost,...
View ArticleNests and the Birds That Built Them
Gallery Page Layout: Gallery A Sharon Beals photographed fifty birds' nests in vivid detail, giving us a glimpse into a beautiful and architectual world.
View ArticleAll About Roots
See also: Supporting Your RootsAll gardeners set out to grow healthy plants, but they also face a stubborn barrier, a curtain beyond which eyesight ends and mystery begins: the surface of the soil....
View ArticleLinks We Love 4/25/2011
-A fascinating interview on Pruned, with Paige Johnson, the writer behind the blog Garden History Girl, about the forgotten history of atomic gardens, which were an attempt to find peaceful uses for...
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Botanic Superlatives: The Desert's Only Self-Watering Plant
Among the valleys and foothills in Israel's Negev desert is a plant that can water itself, in a manner of speaking. A study of desert plants is a study of adaptive behaviors—the dry, hot climate...
View ArticleBotanic Notables: The Smallest Orchid
The discovery of the world's smallest orchid is, fittingly, the story of an intrepid explorer, an enigmatic flower, and the curious luck that brought them together. Joining other small orchids in the...
View ArticleArt + Botany: X-ray Photography
More often than not, plant anatomy is the specialized purview of a trained botanist. Consider the poppy. What does the poppy's internal structure look like during seed maturation? Or the fern—how are...
View ArticleBotanic Notables: The Bashful Plant
Quietly trailing the soil with slender stems, Mimosa pudica is an unassuming herb. While it does not invite attention, it responds dramatically to the touch. At a light caress, its fern-like leaves...
View ArticleBotanic Notables: The Immortal Underground Forest
In South Africa's coastal grasslands, to explore a forest is to walk along its canopy—indeed, it's the only way to observe an extraordinary group of so-called underground trees, where only the...
View ArticleBotanic Notables: Night Blooming Orchid
Orchids are known for their curious behaviors and adaptations and with more than 25,000 species, the Orchidacae family exhibits a dizzying range of colors, shapes, and life cycles. Their enigmatic...
View ArticleBotanic Notables: Moon Trees
In the name of science or sentimentality, astronauts have been sending various artifacts into orbit since the early days of the space race. Sputnik 2 had Laika, the first dog in space; Apollo 11...
View ArticleBotanic Notables: Return of the American Chestnut
In the late 1800s, when the American chestnut (Castanea dentata) reigned in Eastern forests, the tree was a symbol of national identity. Log cabins were built from its lumber, Christmas carols...
View ArticleBotanic Notables: Gardening on Mars
While the Curiousity rover explores its landscape, research is underway on the first garden on Mars. After all, if we intend to spend more time away from Earth, we'll need our plants. Roses and tulips,...
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