Plants for all
Just another plant science blog
Category: Uncategorized
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You may have noticed that there was a large gap between this post and the last. My apologies. I’m increasingly busy, and so my posts will unfortunately be more sporadic from now on. But fear not, the releases shall continue! They’ll be special occasions… think Christmas, but not as good. Anyway, I recently acquired these…
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Just a quick one this week! I noticed these magnificent Jewelweeds (Impatiens capensis) while traveling a few weeks ago, and I just wanted to share them with you. They’re absolutely everywhere, and they have lovely flowers! They’re native to North America, and can generally be found in low-lying areas with wet soil. Figure 1. Left:…
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Housekeeping! I just wanted to apologize for missing last week’s regularly scheduled post. I have been travelling and did not have time to work on my blog. So… yeah, sorry about that. I’ll try to plan ahead better next time. Before we start, I also wanted to let you know that I will be coming…
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I regret to inform you that preparation for this week’s blog post has taken me longer than I expected. Don’t worry, that post will come out next week. While I’m busy cooking that up, I would just like to share with you a little inspirational story from the garden. I’ve grown a bunch of sunflowers…
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I’ll be the first to admit that this title doesn’t make much sense. We’ll only be talking about one kind of plastid today: the etioplast! Etioplasts are plastids which inhabit plant tissues grown in the dark. They undergo rapid conversion to chloroplasts when light is available to power photosynthesis. One of the easiest ways to…
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How do plants sense gravity? I’ve been growing some sunflower seedlings indoors under artificial lights. To demonstrate that plants can sense gravity, I turned one pot on its side and left it in a dark cupboard overnight. As you can see in Figure 1, the seedlings reorient their growth so that they once again face…
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What are plastids? You’ve almost certainly heard about chloroplasts, which are the compartments inside plant cells that perform photosynthesis. They’re small, green, and plant cells have lots of them! Well, in tissues that lie above ground, anyway. Chloroplasts look like this: Figure 1: Chloroplasts inside tomato pericarp cells at 400X magnification (and further enlarged). What…
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Prelude: While I was moving some tomato plants around earlier this week, I couldn’t help but notice that they felt a little… prickly. Ouch! Close examination of tomato plants reveals that they are covered in tiny hair-like structures, which give them this texture (Figure 1). The next time you see a plant, you might also…
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You vs. the plant she told you not to worry about: This week I’d like to draw your attention to these two sunflower varieties I have growing on my deck (Figure 1). Bear in mind that all of these plants belong to the same species of sunflower, Helianthus annuus. The pot on the left contains…
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What are anthocyanins? Anthocyanins are a family of pigments found in many plants that confer red/purple/blue coloration. While there are many kinds of anthocyanin pigments, they all share the same core structure consisting of a flavylium backbone (highlighted in Fig. 1 below) [13]. This backbone is then modified to give a variety of pigments with…
Plants for all 