White clover's toxic tricks traced to its hybridization

White clover is a weed that grows the world over—there's a good chance you have some growing in your yard today. The plant that yard-preeners love to hate was spawned about 20,000 years ago when two European clover species ...

Evolution in action: A new plant species in the Swiss Alps

A new plant species named Cardamine insueta appeared in the region of Urnerboden in the Swiss alps, after the land has changed from forest to grassland over the last 150 years. The inheritance of two key traits from its parent ...

More genes are active in high-performance maize

When two maize inbred lines are crossed with each other, an interesting effect occurs: The hybrid offspring have a significantly higher yield than either of the two parent plants. Scientists at the University of Bonn have ...

Ancient cycads found to be pre-adapted to grow in groves

The ancient cycad lineage has been around since before the age of the dinosaurs. More recently, cycads also co-existed with large herbivorous mammals, such as the ice age megafauna that only went extinct a few tens of thousands ...

Airborne gut action primes wild chili pepper seeds

Scientists have long known that seeds gobbled by birds and dispersed across the landscape tend to fare better than those that fall near parent plants where seed-hungry predators and pathogens are more concentrated.

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