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Oct 30, 2009 — “Plant fossils give first real picture of earliest Neotropical rainforests,” announced a press release from University of Florida.  The fossils from Colombia show that “many of the dominant plant families existing in today’s Neotropical rainforests – including legumes, palms, avocado and banana – have maintained their ecological dominance despite major changes in South America’s climate and geological structure.” The team found 2,000 megafossil specimens from the Paleocene, said to be 58 million years old.  This is only 5 to 8 million years after the extinction of the dinosaurs according to conventional dating.  “The new study provides...

Researchers are recovering beautiful fossils from the Cerrejón Formation of Colombia. One was a giant snake, called the “Titanoboa.” Most recently, a study examined the formation’s fossilized flora, which looked the same as modern plants, and the rainforest environment in which they lived.[1] This research dovetails nicely with other studies on ancient earth’s turbulent climate. There is evidence of dramatic...

Weekend Roundup --snip-- Picture Highlight: the new Herschel Space Telescope, is seeing first light and creating dramatic images of gas clouds in the Milky Way...

Plant Evolution: Where’s the Root? April 16, 2009 — To Darwin, the origin of flowering plants was an “abominable mystery.” Recently, some entries on Science magazine’s blog Origins have claimed the mystery has been solved, at least partially, and a full solution is near at hand. Here is a great test case for evolution. Angiosperms comprise a huge, diverse population of organisms. There should be an ample fossil record, and many genes to decipher. Let’s see if the optimistic claims are rooted in evidence...

The quest for the perfect tomato began in New Brunswick nearly 50 years ago and ended, for now, in a field south of Tel Aviv, Israel. After eight years of taste tests from chefs and tomato lovers, agricultural scientists at Rutgers University say they have resurrected one of the most delicious Jersey tomatoes ever. The elusive "Ramapo" tomato seed has been reproduced in Israel and 572,000 certified organic seeds were shipped this month to New Brunswick. The Ramapo tomato, named after a New Jersey Indian tribe and developed at Rutgers in 1968, will be back for this summer's growing season...

Seeds 200 years old breathe again By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News website The unknown acacia species is now half a metre tall Seeds which have been stored away since the time of George III have been persuaded into new life. Scientists from the Millennium Seed Bank, operated by the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, have induced seeds from three species to germinate. They had been brought to Britain from South Africa by a Dutch merchant in 1803, and were found in a notebook stored in the National Archives. Given this history, the team said it was surprised by...

An orchid growing in harsh conditions defies gravity to twist its male sexual organs 360 degrees to fertilize its female organ, Chinese scientists have discovered. The pink-flowered orchid, Holcoglossum amesianum, grows on tree trunks at altitudes of 1,200 to 2,000 metres in China's Yunnan province. The plant flowers during the drought season from February to April, when there is no wind. Under such conditions, the plant can't use the traditional means of mating used in flowering plants, such as relying on insects or other animals, wind, or gravity to carry the pollen. In Thursday's issue of the journal Nature,...

A ten-year survey in Cameroon by scientists from the UK's Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew has turned up more than 200 previously unknown plants. The researchers have found a higher diversity of plants in the Kupe-Bakossi region than any other site in tropical Africa. Highlights include new species of coffee, spectacular orchids and new relatives of the fig. The researchers say their work has led to local conservation initiatives. Mountain road Kupe-Bakossi lies around 100 kilometres north of Douala, Cameroon's second city - a two-hour journey by bumpy road. At the end of it is a treasure-trove of specimens for...

Yet that is what seems to occur in the weedy cress Arabidopsis thaliana, the workhorse of plant biologists. Cress with two mutant copies of one gene seem to be able to correct the DNA they pass on, ensuring that at least a few of their offspring revert to normal. Robert Pruitt, whose team at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, US, made this extraordinary discovery, thinks that the mutant genes are being repaired using RNA templates inherited from earlier generations

BRAZZAVILLE (Reuters) - A giant three-tiered mushroom which measures a meter (yard) across and was found in the tropical forests of the Republic of Congo has left experts in the capital Brazzaville scratching their heads. "It's the first time we've ever seen a mushroom like this so it's difficult for us to classify. But we are going to determine what it is scientifically," Pierre Botaba, head of Congo's veterinary and zoology center, told reporters on Thursday. The giant fungi stands 18 inches high and has three tiered caps on top of a broad stem. The bottom cap measures one meter...

GAINESVILLE, Fla., Feb. 2 (AScribe Newswire) -- A group of scientists has created the first comprehensive evolutionary reconstruction of the many families of flowering plants, an achievement that could aid in the search for plant-based cures for diseases and improve agricultural crops. The group, which includes two University of Florida botanists, will publish its results today in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. UF botany Professor Doug Soltis said flowering plants are the largest group of plants, comprising at least 250,000 species, with the oldest originating at least 130 million years ago. Encompassing nearly...

Rotting trash can? Decaying dead animal? No. It was a giant tropical plant whose rare bloom in Miami on Monday night drew a small gaggle of rapturous plant enthusiasts to admire the smelly splendor. "Mr. Stinky," the amorphophallus titanum, or Titan Arum, was towering at more than 85 inches in a conservatory at the Fairchild Tropical Garden. "It's like wet, dead rat, really," laughed Miami lawyer Claudio Rivera. He hurried over from work to see the bloom, which has grown in recent weeks at a rate of up to 7 inches a day. The Titan Arum was discovered by botanists...