plants news stories on Newser

Farming's Future: No More Plows?

Dustin Lushing — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 14:15:00 CDT

A transformation in farming may be under way, one that leaves plows in the dust. It's called "no-till" farming, and the AFP (via Raw Story ) catches up with the growing trend in Indiana. The idea is that a plow—or on a smaller scale, a garden shovel—disrupts the...

32K-Year-Old Plant Brought Back to Life

Neal Colgrass — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 19:17:58 CST

A flower that last bloomed when saber-toothed cats roamed the Earth is once again alive and growing. Russian scientists say they've dug up remnants of a 32,000-year-old plant from Siberia's frozen wasteland and successfully cloned 36 more of them from its fruit tissue, the New York Times reports. Now...

Thank Moss for Livable Planet

Matt Cantor — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:11:22 CST

About 480 million years ago, the planet was a much hotter place—and we have moss to thank for the habitable Earth we enjoy today, research suggests. Back then, 16 times as much carbon dioxide existed in the atmosphere, scientists think. Some 20 million years later, carbon dioxide levels had...

Pepsi Designs 100% Plant-Based Bottle

Matt Cantor — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 10:23:33 CDT

PepsiCo has developed the world's first plastic bottle made of nothing but renewable, plant-based materials, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. The bottle is made from corn husks, switch grass, and pine bark; but in the future, Pepsi hopes to use its food byproducts like orange and potato peels. Pepsi will start...

Scientists Slash Number of World's Plants by 600,000

Drew Nelles — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 10:55:02 CDT

A comprehensive scientific study will trim some 600,000 duplicates from the world’s list of flowering plants, the Guardian reports. After centuries of scientists naming “new” plants that had already been discovered, we currently count the number of plant species at about 1 million—but a more realistic number is...

IBM Creates Plastic From Plants

crazy_baldheads — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 09:07:06 CST

IBM has created a form of plastic that is made from plants, the company announced today. Researchers claim that the process can lead to the replacement of petroleum-based plastics that are killing our planet. "This discovery and new approach using organic catalysts could lead to well-defined, biodegradable molecules made from...

Aquaponics Gaining Converts Among Gardeners

Harry Kimball — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 15:35:00 CST

Aquaponics—the word is a blend of hydroponics and aquaculture, the cultivation of fish—is backyard agriculture using only fish droppings as fertilizer. And it's not for everyone, at least yet. One man’s greenhouse “wouldn’t look out of place on a wayward space station where pioneers have gone to escape...

Hey, Vegans, Plants Have Feelings, Too

John Johnson — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 13:52:04 CST

It's hip these days to banish meat from the diet, chow down instead on the plant world, and congratulate ourselves for our enlightened morals. But what about the poor plants? They "no more aspire to being stir-fried in a wok than a hog aspires to being peppercorn-studded in my Christmas...

Scientists Find Ancestor to Giant Dinosaurs

Nick McMaster — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:23:42 CST

Paleontologists in South Africa have found a new dinosaur, a sort of missing link between smaller two-legged creatures that dined on plants and the long-necked carnivorous giants of Jurassic Park . The new species, aardonyx celestae, was 20 feet long and walked on two feet. But crucially, it was able to...