The Skeleton Flower – The White Flower That Becomes Translucent When It Rains
Diphylleia grayi is not the most striking of flowers, in fact many people pass by it without even noticing its white, rounded petals. But that’s because they don’t know about its most impressive feature, turning translucent in contact with water. Native to wooded mountainsides in the colder regions of Japan, “skeleton flowers” bloom from mid-spring to […]
The Rare Rainforest Tree That Bleeds Metal
Pycnandra acuminata is a rare tree native to the shrinking rainforests of New Caledonia that has the rare ability to collect large quantities of nickel from the ground. Its blue-green sap reportedly contains up to 25% nickel. Trees, or plants in general for that matter, and heavy metals like nickel and zinc don’t really go […]
The Creeping Devil – A Unique Cactus That Kills Parts of Itself to Move Across the Desert
The Creeping Devil is a rare and fascinating species of cactus that is not only capable of cloning itself to survive, but also of detaching from its major shoot to move through the desert over time. Also known by its scientific name, Stenocereus eruca, this unusual species of cactus is endemic to the northwestern Mexican state of Baja […]
MIT Scientists Develop Method to Make Plants Glow in the Dark
MIT researchers have made an important breakthrough in their quest to make plants that glow in the dark a reality. In what they call Plant Nanobionics, the engineers embedded nanoparticles into the leaves of a watercress plant that caused the plants to give off a dim glow for three and a half hours. Their next […]
Chinese Students Spend 6 Months Creating Stunning Dress Out of 6,000 Plant Leaves
Four sophomore students at the University of Hefei, in eastern China, recently proved that you don’t have to spend a small fortune on a designer dress to look stunning. You can make it yourself, for free, using only plant leaves. Photos of the four students’ stunning leaf dress have been doing the rounds on Chinese […]
Crown Shyness – When Trees Avoid Touching Each Other
Crown shyness or canopy disengagement is a mysterious natural phenomenon in which the crowns of some tree species do not touch each other, but are separated by a gap clearly visible from ground level. The effect usually occurs between trees of the same species, but has also been observed between trees of different species. The […]
World’s Largest Rose Bush Dates Back to 1885
You’ve probably seen some impressive-looking flowers, but unless you’ve been to the Tombstone Rose Tree Museum, you’ve never seen anything quite like the World’s Largest Rose Bush – a gnarled trunk about 12 feet in diameter, with its branches covering 9,000 square feet. It’s been around since 1885, and yes, it still blooms every Spring. The White Lady […]
Night Sky Petunias – Not Your Grandmother’s Petunias
The internet is going crazy over these incredibly beautiful purple flowers that seem covered in bright white stars. They are called Nigh Sky Petunias, or Galaxy Flowers and they are indeed stunning. I could spend hours just staring at them and not get bored. Petunias, in general, are not the most exciting flowers to look […]
The Mysterious Albino Redwood Trees Defying the Laws of Nature
For the vast majority of plants, an inability to produce chlorophyll is synonymous with death, but that general rule apparently doesn’t apply to the hundreds of documented “albino redwoods” in Humboldt Redwoods State Park, California. Some of them are almost completely white, others, known as redwood chimeras, are half green and half white, but they have […]
New World’s Hottest Chili Is Deceptively Tiny, Could Send You Into Anaphylactic Shock
When Welsh fruit grower Mike Smith set out to create a novelty chili pepper for a national grower’s show, he had no idea he would accidentally end up with the world’s hottest pepper. Called Dragon’s Breath – a tribute to its Welsh heritage – the record-breaking pepper scores a whopping 2.48 million units on the Scoville scale of hotness. Intended […]
German Artist Manipulates Plant Roots to Grow in Intricate Visually-Striking Patterns
Inspired by Charles and Francis Darwin’s theory on plant intelligence, German artist Diana Scherer managed to successfully coerce the roots of various plants to grow in specific patterns. The results of her work are simply breathtaking. In his book, The Power of Movements of Plants, Charles Darwin argued that while plants are not capable of moving […]
Artists Manipulate the Way Grass Grows to Create Living Photos
Most people don’t pay any attention to grass and the way it grows, but British artists Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey have always been fascinated by it and have found an ingenious way to incorporate it into their art. By manipulating the way grass grows, they are able to literally print detailed photographs onto a […]
Watermelon Plant That Yielded 131 Fruit in a Single Harvest Sets New World Record
Watermelon plants usually yield only 1 to 4 fruit per harvest, but a new variety created by an agricultural technology company in China has recently set a new Guinness Record after yielding no less than 131 massive fruit. The Chinese seem to be really good at creating super plants. Just weeks after we posted about their impressive “octopus […]
Woman Turns Her Brooklyn Home into a Lush Urban Jungle
Fashion Model Summer Rayne Oakes has been living in a 1,200-square-foot converted industrial space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, for 11 years, and during in that time she has managed to turn it into a stunning oasis filled with 500 plants, including a living wall, an irrigated vertical garden, a closet garden, edibles and exotic species. “I think […]
“Octopus Tomato Trees” Can Yield up to 32,000 Tomatoes per Harvest
They might look like something created in a laboratory, but these “octopus tomato trees” are merely hybrids that grow from a single tomato vine but spread on a large trellis. Their crown grows to about 40-50 square meters and they yield tens of thousands of tomatoes every season. The first time I saw a photo of an […]