Plant news, features and articles

Fossil sites in Australia hold pollen and spores from the dinosaur age, when the island straddled the Antarctic Circle. Now, scientists have re-created the habitat of "polar dinosaurs," using these plant remains.

Sugar beets and spinach are the best vegetables to grow if you live in a temperate, midsize city during a nuclear winter, a new study suggests, while wheat and carrots are recommended for industrial production on the outskirts of town.

Tonka bean trees survive lightning strikes — and use the powerful electric shocks to kill their competitors.

A newly discovered plant found by a national park volunteer in the Texas desert is a small, fuzzy flower that pokes up between rocks. With its limited range, this species could be threatened by climate change.

Researchers have counted the number of trees in China and mapped their distribution across the country using a laser-based technique called lidar.

Rather than helping each other out when they're attacked, plants may have to eavesdrop on each other to know when to launch their own defenses.

A melting ice patch in the Rocky Mountains uncovered an ancient forest, and these trees have stories to tell about dynamic landscapes and climate change.

As the Atlantic grew wider, the ancestral population of all of today's oaks may have been straddling the continents of the Northern Hemisphere. If so, the ancestor of the oaks we know today was a widespread population that was cleaved in half as North America inched westward.

Fossilized plant remains discovered near a Utah ghost town have stumped scientists, who are unable to link them to any modern or extinct plants.