Dutch Study Says Wi-Fi Makes Trees Sick. A recent study by Dutch scientists found that Wi-Fi radiation could be responsible for sickness in urban-populated trees. Image: baltimoresun What would life be like without Wi-Fi, bringer of high speed internet access? Probably pretty inconvenient considering that millions of computer users around the world use it at home, at work and other public places to get online. Having access to wireless networks makes our lives easier, but according to a Dutch study from Wageningen University, this access may be compromising the health of trees. The study began five years ago in the city of Alphen aan den Rijn. According to an article from PC World : “The study exposed 20 ash trees to various radiation sources for a period of three months. Image: p2pnet Sounds pretty scary, doesn’t it? What do you think? Digg. Flowers in Ultra-Violet. The compilation of species will continue to be updated at irregular intervals.
All species listed here have been documented, and links are added whenever I can find spare time for updating. These images are made for illustrative purposes, not as artistic statements per se. However, there are lots of food for thought in the convoluted ways Nature expresses itself, so for once the artist can step backand let the subjects speak for themselves. "Das Ding an Sich" to paraphrase Kant, or Eigenvalue of Nature. If you are unfamiliar with the botany, just select any species indicated as having a "strong" response to learn how this looks. However, not all species have the typical bull's-eye UV pattern, which may be confined to symmetrical flowers. The UV range of the spectrum has no predefined colours, so we are free to assign any colour we like.
UV fluorescence may be a common trait to most flowers, but might be of temporary occurrence for parts of the flower. Animal consciousness? Plants Communicate to Warn Against Danger. Plants chatter amongst themselves to spread information, a lot like humans and other animals, new research suggests.
A unique internal network apparently allows greens to warn each other against predators and potential enemies. Many herbal plants such as strawberry, clover, reed and ground elder naturally form a set of connections to share information with each other through channels known as runners—horizontal stems that physically bond the plants like tubes or cables along the soil surface and underground.
Though connected to vertical stems, runners eventually form new buds at the tips and ultimately form a network of plants. “Network-like plants do not usually produce vertical stems but their stems lie flat on the ground and can hence be used as network infrastructure,” said researcher Josef Stuefer from the Radboud University in the Netherlands. Stuefer and his team let loose caterpillars on white clover plants and watched them eat a single leaf on the network.
Why Do Some Clovers Have Four Leaves? The leaves of clover plants are said to hold the luck o' the Irish when they sport four leaves.
This myth likely arose because four-leaf clovers are rare finds — the result of an equally rare genetic mutation in the clover plant. There are about 300 species in the clover genus Trifolium, or trefoil, so named because the plants usually have three leaves, or technically, leaflets. The ones you typically find in North America are white clover (Trifolium repens). Typically all clover plants feature leaves that have three leaflets on them — legend has it that St. Patrick used this so-called shamrock as the symbol of the Holy Trinity. "The 4-leaf (technically, 4-leaflet) and higher-leaflet variants are caused by rare genetic mutations," biologist Kenneth Olsen of Washington University in St.
According to the Web site of the Guinness Book of World Records, the most leaves ever found on a clover are 18. White clover.