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Suzanne Simard: How trees talk to each other

Suzanne Simard: How trees talk to each other
Related:  Amazing PlantsTreesenvironment

Microsoft Is Teaching Your Plants To Talk Back Gardeners have long claimed that talking to plants helps them grow—an idea backed up by science. But more recently, we’re discovering that plants talk, too, reacting to their environment in a language of electrical impulses and chemicals. The question is whether there's a way that we—humans and plants—could talk to one another? Thanks to Project Florence, a project created by post-doc researcher Helene Steiner during her time as an artist-in-residence with Microsoft Research’s Studio 99 program, we're getting closer. Project Florence is a sensor-loaded plant capsule that’s connected to a computer. To begin communicating, you type anything you like at the device's accompanying terminal. First, your message is mapped for sentiment—is it a positive or negative message? "We can almost create moods of the plant, and abstract the message that comes back," says Steiner. "We were kind of caught off guard a little bit, because this raised a lot of visibility across the company," says Roseway.

The Crooked Forest: A Mysterious Grove of 400 Oddly Bent Pine Trees in Poland This stand of bent pine trees known as the Crooked Forest is easily one of the strangest places in Central Europe. Located outside of Nowe Czarnowo, West Pomerania, Poland, the nearly 400 trees are widely agreed to have been shaped by human hands sometime in the 1930s, but for what purposes is still up for debate. Each tree is bent near the base at 90 degrees, a form that could possibly be helpful in boat or furniture making. Strangely enough, every tree is bent in exactly the same direction: due North. A quick search online reveals a host of conspiracy theories ranging from witchcraft to energy fields. Whatever the reason, we’re glad photographer Kilian Schönberger (previously) stopped by to capture these photos. Update: Thank you all for your many, many suggestions about the trees.

Alam Sehat Lestari | Kesehatan dan Konservasi Alam The "Walking trees" of Central and South America move a few centimeters every day | Inhabitat - Green Design, Innovation, Architecture, Green Building Lord of the Rings fans will be pleased to learn that real-life Ents, or at least a close cousin of theirs, can be found marching through the forests of the Sumaco Biosphere Reserve near Quito, Ecuador. In the deep interior of the Reserve, Walking Palm or Cashapona trees slowly migrate across the wilderness as new roots replace the old. The new growth drags the tree along, a process that sometimes allows the tree to walk a few centimeters in just one day. Socratea exorrhiza is a palm tree native to tropical biomes in Central and South America. Up to 25 meters tall, the Walking Palm is pollinated by beetles and its seeds and seedlings are a food source for many animals living in this ecosystem. Related: Trees thriving on contaminated land could help clean up humanity’s mess The roots also regrow to cope with a changing environment. Via BBC Images via Hans Hillewaert/Wikimedia, Smartse/Wikimedia, and Ruestz/Wikimedia

The Deaths of Millions of California Trees Endanger the Lives of Thousands of California Humans The polyphagous shot hole borer, a brown-black beetle from southeast Asia, never gets bigger than a tenth of an inch. It breeds inside trees; pregnant females drill into trunks to create networks of tunnels where they lay their eggs. The beetles also carry a fungus called Fusarium; it infects the tunnels, and when the eggs hatch, the borer larvae eat the fungus. Unfortunately Fusarium also disrupts the trees’ ability to transport nutrients and water. Holes where the beetle bored into the tree get infected and form oily lesions. Sometimes sugars from the tree’s sap accumulate in a ring around the hole—that’s called a “sugar volcano.” This would just be a scary story for arborists and tree-huggers, except: Fusarium dieback is on track to kill 26.8 million trees across Southern California in the next few years, almost 40 percent of the trees from Los Angeles to the Nevada border and south to Mexico. I’m not just being a monkeywrenching fearmonger. And at the base?

The Most Brazen Rip-Off Ever? How the Beverage Industry Brainwashed You to Fear Tap Water The following is the latest in a new series of articles on AlterNet called Fear in America that launched this March. Read the introduction to the series. The biggest con job perpetrated on the consumer is not some shady operation selling bogus cures through TV infomercials. America’s biggest snake-oil salesman is actually the beverage industry, or Big Bev, which resells the simplest and most vital product for thousands of times its value. That product is drinking water. Multinationals like PepsiCo, the Coca-Cola Company and Nestle rake in a combined $110 billion a year selling bottled water worldwide. But the expensive water the beverage industry sells is no better — and possibly worse — than the water you get from your tap (and often, the water they sell is tap water). Fear. And it appears that their tactics are working. To make matters worse, the supposedly healthy alternative is virtually unregulated. Misplaced Doubts But Cleveland only tested a few samples of bottled water.

Plants Exhibit The Same Senses As Humans And See, Touch, Smell, Hear and Even Taste By: Daniel Chamovitz, Director of the Manna Center for Plant Biosciences at Tel Aviv University In Israel, Guest Contributor Have you ever wondered what the grass under your feet feels, what an apple tree smells, or a marigold sees? Plants stimulate our senses constantly, but most of us never consider them as sensory beings too. In fact senses are extremely important to plants. Plants have scientifically been show to draw alternative sources of energy from other plants. What do plants see? Studies have shown that plants bend to the light as if hungry for the sun’s rays, which is exactly what they are. We now know they do this using phototropins – light receptors in the membranes of cells in the plant’s tip. Plants see red light using receptors in their leaves called phytochromes. Phototropins and phytochromes are completely different from the photoreceptors found in animals’ eyes, although all consist of a protein connected to a chemical dye that absorbs the light. About the Author:

In the Language of Trees: How Plants Can Teach Us to Communicate | Wake Up World May 29th, 2017 By Matt Toussaint Guest writer for Wake Up World When I was a kid, I would name the trees in my backyard. Over two decades later, I find myself in the Amazon jungle and I’m still talking to trees. I now walk into the forest and feel enmeshed in this visible and invisible web of plant-ness, part of an ongoing conversation that never once left any of us out. As children, we loved them. Several years ago, on my first quest to the Amazon jungle, I set out to participate in a traditional healing practice known as a dieta. The purpose of the whole affair is to make contact with the spirit of the tree so that it will teach you its wisdom and healing properties. It’s quite humbling to spend time with plants in this way, regarding them as teachers and asking for their help. Still, the dieta passed without fireworks. Months became years, and one shamanic diet became several more. The trees wanted to grow, strong and healthy, and they wanted the same thing for me. About the author:

10 Worst Examples of Packaging Waste | Post-Landfill Action Network (PLAN) Packaging waste represents about one-third of all municipal trash – making this type of waste a significant contributor to the global waste crisis. Most of this packaging waste is largely unnecessary. Take a look at these 10 egregious examples of packaging waste to see what we mean! Small Electronics: Lots of small electronics like USBs and storage cards are sold in heavy plastic packages. Plastic Water Bottles: These might be the most wasteful packaged item in stores because there is almost no reason to buy them. Packaged fruits and vegetables: any sort of wrapper or package on fruits and vegetables is a huge waste! Apple iPhones and iPods: Although the boxes tend to be small, in each product there are tons of unnecessary pieces of plastic around each little component in the box. Caprisun: Capri Sun is another example of individually packaged items (drink pouches) inside a larger bulk package (a cardboard box). Can you think of another example of wasteful packaging?

plant-e.com Home Leafsnap UK app Tips to help you get the best results Leafsnap UK uses cutting-edge visual recognition technology to match the shape of your leaf to thousands of leaf images in its database. Leaves, light conditions and photo style can vary, so here's how to get the best results. 1. 2. 3. 4. from directly above the leaf, with your iPhone parallel to itoutside in even light - shade is better than sunshine, and avoid dappled lightwith as little shadow around the leaf as possible The leaf should be as big as possible without touching the edges of the screen. the background is entirely white and a white border surrounds the leafno hands, fingers or anything else are visible in the picturethe leaf is in focus, particularly its edges or marginsyou photograph the whole leaf rather than individual leaflets Leaflets Some leaves are made up of leaflets (which are leaf-like structures) attached to the leafstalk. No matches? About the Museum team The Museum team: Acknowledgements The origins of Leafsnap

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