botanic notables

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Botanic Notables: A Flower That Plants Its Own Seeds

While most plants disperse seeds far away, some have evolved a mechanism to keep them close and better ensure their survival. These geocarpic species actually deposit their own fruits in the soil. Last year, a botanist in rural Brazil named a newly discovered species Spigelia genuflexa, after its tendency to bow towards the ground, burying its seeds.

Botanic Notables: A New Flower's Evolution in Scotland

By Anna Laurent

A new species of monkey flower has been found growing on the banks of a stream in Scotland. But it is no ordinary discovery—the flower is a rare hybrid of two foreign species, and a glimpse into evolution in action.

Botanic Notable: The Remembrance Poppy

By Anna Laurent

Poppies are a remembrance flower, symbolizing the sacrifice of veterans, as well as post-war regeneration and hope. With their tendency to thrive in disturbed & ravaged land, poppies would frequently fill European battlefields, but it wasn't until the 1915 publication of "In Flanders Fields," an oft-quoted poem written from the World War I battlefield, that the flower became an emblem of war.

Botanic Notables: The Crooked Forest

By Anna Laurent

In a small corner of western Poland, a forest of about 400 pine trees all grow with a 90 degree bend at the base of the trunks. For lack of a scientific name, the collection of curved trees is known as The Crooked Forest.

Botanic Notables: The Lady Gaga Fern

By Anna Laurent

Lady Gaga is a pop star, cultural icon, provocateur and now, a genus of ferns—at least by name. Last week, botanists at Duke University named a newly identified genus of ferns after the singer.

Botanic Notables: An Upside-Down Forest in Juneau

By Anna Laurent

A glacier, a rainforest, and a forest of upside-down trees—naturally fallen spruce and hemlock, repurposed as flower pots—are some of the wonders in Alaska's Mendenhall Valley.

Botanic Notables: A Public Food Forest in Seattle

By Anna Laurent

The first trees were just planted in Beacon Food Forest, a forager-friendly garden in Seattle. With a projected seven acres of fruits, nuts, and vegetables, it will be the nation's largest public edible landscape.

Botanic Notables: Autumn Colors in a Japanese Flower Park

By Anna Laurent

The hills of Japan's Hitachi Flower Park blossom bright with about 30,000 bushes of Kochia, a bush whose leaves and stems turn red in October. A couple million light pink and white cosmos bloom alongside in the park's 153 hectacres.

Botanic Notables: The Fruit Salad Tree

By Anna Laurent

A fan of grafting and citrus fruits, I've been pursuing the legendary Tree of Many Fruits for some time now, and have yet to find one. Now I could have one in my backyard. Like many of my favorite trees, it hails from Australia. James and Kerry West, farmers in New South Wales, have been cultivating "fruit salad trees," each of which produce several kinds of fruits.

Botanic Notables: Fig Stories

By Anna Laurent

One of California's most impressive Ficus trees is in San Diego—like most figs, it is pollinated by symbiotic wasps that help make your harvest so sweet.