Plants, features and articles | Educational Science

Jun 19, 2018

7 Plants You Can Eat If You're Stranded in the Wild

Edible Plants (Image credit: Shutterstock)On the off chance that you find yourself stranded in the wilderness on your next camping trip or hike, don’t panic — there are plenty of things to eat once you’ve run out of trail mix. From its sandy deserts to its emerald woodlands, the continental...

Jul 18, 2018

This Woman Stumbled into a 'Hobo Parsnip' Plant. Days Later, Her Legs Were Severely Burned.

When Charlotte Murphy slid into some brush while walking along a road in Vermont, she stood back up, brushed herself off and continued on her way. But her stumble came back to haunt her days later, in the form of several excruciating second-degree burns. Murphy, 21, had stumbled into a...

Sep 25, 2018

Can Seeds in a Dead Person's Stomach Really Sprout into Trees?

A story of apparent tragedy and luck is making its way around the Internet, describing how a fig seed in a murdered man's stomach grew into a tree, which later helped authorities find his corpse almost 40 years later in a Cypriot cave. But, like many fantastical tales, key elements...

Nov 1, 2018

Smoketree Photos: The Ghosts of the North American Desert

A unique look and name (Image credit: Linda & Dr. Dick Buscher)The deserts of the American Southwest are known for their spectacular sunsets, extreme temperatures and a wide variety of unique flora and fauna. The all-too-common scorpion, like other critters, has changed very little in appearance since the time its...

Nov 30, 2018

Here's What Photosynthesis Sounds Like Underwater

If you listen closely, you can hear little plants harnessing the sun's energy. All you have to do is dive underwater and listen for the faint but distinctive ping! that red algae make while carrying out photosynthesis, a new study finds. Just like plants on land, algae photosynthesize — essentially...

Mar 6, 2019

Stunning 'Superbloom' of Flowers Is Set to Arrive in Southern California

The hills of Southern California will soon be alive with a massive superbloom of wildflowers, thanks to an unusually rainy fall and winter, news sources report. Southern California has been parched by drought in recent years, but Mother Nature served up the perfect recipe for a spectacular mid-March superbloom. First,...

Apr 6, 2019

The World's Tallest Tropical Tree Is Longer Than a Football Field

The world's tallest tropical tree on record is a giant, measuring an astonishing 330 feet (100.8 meters) from ground to sky — a height that's more than five bowling lanes stacked end to end. This tree, likely also the world's tallest flowering plant, lives in a rainforest in Sabah, Malaysian...

Jun 12, 2019

The World's Plants Are Going Extinct About 500 Times Faster Than They Should, Study Finds

If you're the sort of person who just can't keep a plant alive, you're not alone — according to a new study published June 10 in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, the entire planet seems to be suffering from a similar affliction. After analyzing the populations of more than...

Jun 14, 2019

The Carnivorous Plant Named 'Turtle Socks' Has Been Eating Baby Salamanders for Lunch

In the bogs of Ontario, Canada, certain plants have developed a taste for amphibians. The northern pitcher plant (Sarracenia purpurea) is a type of carnivorous flora well-known for chowing down on hundreds of different species of insects. Now, according to a study published June 5 in the journal Ecology, scientists...

Jun 28, 2019

Why Didn't Chernobyl's Radiation Kill the Plants There?

Chernobyl has become a byword for catastrophe. The 1986 nuclear disaster, recently brought back into the public eye by the hugely popular TV show of the same name, caused thousands of cancers, turned a once populous area into a ghost city, and resulted in the setting up of an exclusion...

Jul 10, 2019

Don't Waste Your Emotions on Plants, They Have No Feelings, Grumpy Scientists Say

A tree falls in the woods; but whether or not anyone hears it, the tree has no regrets. Nor does it experience fear, anger, relief or sadness as it topples to the ground. Trees — and all plants, for that matter — feel nothing at all, because consciousness, emotions and...

Dec 6, 2019

Plants 'Scream' in the Face of Stress

Editor's note: This research was originally published in 2019 to the preprint database bioRxiv and was then published in the peer-reviewed journal Cell on March 30, 2023. In times of intense stress, people sometimes let out their angst with a squeal ⁠— and a new study suggests that plants might...

Jan 3, 2020

The World's Largest Corpse Flower Is Blooming Right Now (and It Stinks)

Proving that 2020 is going to be a year of mixed blessings, conservationists in Indonesia have discovered the largest-ever blooming flower — on a parasitic plant that literally smells like death. The record-setting flower's name is Rafflesia tuan-mudae, though it's sometimes referred to as a corpse flower for the unholy,...

Jun 1, 2020

Here's how plants became meat eaters

About 70 million years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, a genetic anomaly allowed some plants to turn into meat eaters. This was done in part, with a stealthy trick: repurposing genes meant for their roots and leaves and using them instead to catch prey, a new study finds. This...

Jun 3, 2020

Sexy, stinky corpse plant blooms to life on livestream (watch here)

Who wants to see a plant that's as tall as a person and reeks of decaying flesh? (Aside from everyone in the Live Science newsroom, that is.) Amorphophallus titanum, also known as the corpse plant for its eye-watering aroma, is native to Sumatra. But one is blooming right now in...