collectiveevolution--2019-03-10--Research Reveals Plants Can Think Choose Remember

Research Reveals Plants Can Think, Choose & Remember

Facebook, which seems to have become a government-run agency claiming to help fight the war on ‘fake news,’ has pledged to delete and flag content that spreads misinformation. This is great, and should be done, but the only problem is that content around the internet is being taken down, flagged, and deemed as a ‘conspiracy theory’ when it is well-supported, factual, and backed by peer-reviewed science.  I just wrote an article about the recent measles outbreak in Washington State for example, and how that state is pushing hard for all school-aged children to receive a mandatory MMR vaccination. These outbreaks are constantly being blamed on unvaccinated children, but the mainstream never points people towards the actual statistics showing that Washington State, like many other states, have not experienced a drop in MMR vaccination coverage. Instead, MMR vaccine coverage is very high.  Furthermore, they don’t mention that there’s been a long history of measles outbreaks in highly vaccinated and fully vaccinated populations (see article linked below for examples and sources), and they don’t mention the deaths, disabilities, and adverse reactions that’ve occurred as a result of the MMR vaccine either. Why don’t they mention that the death rate from measles in Washington State was just 1.4/10,000 (source in article below) before the introduction of the vaccine? You can read more about that and access multiple studies and testimonies on this subject in the article linked below:  Biochemical Engineer Drops Bombshell Facts About Measles & The MMR Vaccine In Washington  Information and science are constantly emerging regarding vaccinations, but we never hear about any of it from mainstream media. I also recently published an article of Robert F. Kennedy explaining how big pharmaceutical companies are the biggest lobbyists, even more than big oil, and how they’ve completely compromised both the Democrats and the Republicans.  So, what’s some of the latest information regarding vaccine safety?  An article published in Nature, International Journal of Science titled “Italian scientists protest funding for vaccine-safety investigation” outlines how The National Order of Biologists made a €10,000 donation to a group that questions the safety of vaccines.  The groups name is Corvelva, and they received the donation on the 26th of October of 2018. The group believes that the research it conducts is necessary because “previous studies it has funded, which have not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, indicate that some vaccines contain impurities, or lack the active ingredients they claim to contain.”  Nature points out that “Some scientists in Italy are up in arms over a donation from the organization that oversees the nation’s professional biology qualification to  an advocacy group that opposes the country’s policy of mandatory childhood vaccination.”  This part is confusing: Why would any group or any scientist oppose more safety studies regarding vaccinations? Wouldn’t professionals on both sides of the coin be in support of as much vaccine safety testing as possible?  ONB president Vincenzo D’Anna told Nature in an e-mail interview that there is a need for truly independent vaccine research because, in his opinion, work conducted in public laboratories and at universities is usually influenced or funded by companies that produce vaccines.  “The goal is to contribute to complete the biological and chemical analyses on vaccines,” he said in the interview, part of which the ONB has published in its Bulletin.  Again, Nature points out that many scientists dismiss the need for more vaccine safety testing and that they are upset. That being said, it’s a comforting thought that ONB disagrees and that they are supporting this type of thing. Clearly, many professionals within that organization don’t believe that vaccines go through rigorous safety testing, as is claimed by many. Again, what harm could be done by further testing?  The first vaccine that was tested was the Infanrix Hexa vaccine. It’s a six-in-one vaccine that’s manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) that’s supposed to contain the following antigens: tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis toxoids; inactivated poliomyelitis viral strains 1-2-3; and hepatitis B surface antigen.  Corvelva discovered that none of these antigens were actually in the vaccine, which means it had zero antibodies to the intended antigens to be created. This was a huge shock, and in addition to that they also found the following:  Traces of 65 chemical cross-contaminants from other manufacturing lines:  Tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis toxoids, D antigens of Poliomyelitis 1-2-3, hepatitis B proteins obtained with genetic engineering and Haemophylus polysaccharides chemically linked to tetanus toxoid as carrier. Toxoids are created by treatments with formaldehyde and glutaraldehyde that should remove toxicity keeping intact their ability to stimulate protective antibodies against original toxins. We were expecting to find the three toxoids and the other antigens not modified by treatment with formaldehyde and glutaraldehyde, to separate the antigens from each other and to be digestible by the enzyme specific for proteins (trypsin). We have found instead a real polymer, insoluble and indigestible, that we supposed to be the set of antigens chemically bound together (has to be defined if this is present as an aggregate of the individual antigens or a single macromolecule), on which we can find in literature partial information regarding the single antigens. This macromolecule could not be recognized in any way by the protein databases, and in fact it turned out to be a solid compound of an unknown chemical structure. Proteins solubility and their digestion (i.e. the capacity to divide them into small peptide fragments) are two typical proteins characteristics that not only makes it possible to study them through some specific analysis methods but are also fundamental for the interaction with the immune system to create protective antibodies, because if the protein structure is heavily altered from the original one, the new antibodies result completely different from those that are able to attack the original antibodies causing illnesses. Since this polymer we have encountered, derived from the antigenic mix, is not only different for its spatial conformation but it’s chemically different, so we can state that we are not facing antigens similar to the original ones but in the form of a compound with an unknown and unpredictable toxicity and efficacy. (source)  The fact that the vaccine antigens were not detected is seriously concerning, and so is the fact that, of the 65 signs of chemical contaminants, only 35% are known. This was only the first phase of this safety testing, as a second analytical study with standard controls will be released.  7 chemical toxins were also identified, and the group states that these toxins have a structure that could probably be partially derived from the formaldehyde, glutaraldehyde and cyanogen bromide reactions with other chemical contaminants in the vaccine.  We’d like to point out that the toxicity of many of these toxins have been confirmed and published in Pubchem or Toxnet and this poses important safety problems, issues and concerns. From the protein and peptide fraction study, various free peptides of bacterial origin have been obtained probably coming from the bacterial culture cells used for the antigen extraction. Literature reports bacterial peptides as potential allergens 5 and also as capable of inducing autoimmune reactions 6 and these too put a safety issue that needs to be further clarified with the regulatory bodies. Coming back to the two basic principles that have been our topic on this analysis path, we reaffirm what we have said in the recent interview on the scientific journal Nature: we are inquiring the vaccines efficacy and safety and we can’t quite understand how it is possible to claim that this vaccine is even able to generate the 6 protective antibodies – reason why it is designed for – and furthermore to understand how this cluster made of 6 neurotoxic antigens bound together can be claimed as not toxic for newborns. Infanrix Hexa hexavalent, as for the method we have commissioned, casts major doubts on both its effectiveness and on its safety… One thing is for sure: we will not stop to proceed.  In the 90s, Dr. Antonietta Gatti discovered the relationship between micro- and nano-particles as well as a great number of pathologies: cardiovascular diseases, many forms of cancer, multiple neurological diseases, and autoimmune diseases. She’s taken part in many international research projects, including the pathologies induced by depleted uranium, waste incineration, food polluted with inorganic particles, and more.  Currently, she is the coordinator of the Italian Institute of Technology’s Project of Nanoecotoxicology, called INESE.  She is also a selected expert of the FAO/WHO for the safety in nanotechnological food, a Member of the NANOTOX Cluster of the European Commission, the author of the book “Nanopathology: the health impact of nanoparticles,” on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Biomaterials Applications, and a Member of the CPCM of the Italian Ministry of Defense.  Furthermore, her and her husband Dr. Stefano Montanari founded a laboratory called Nano-diagnostics for the evaluation of the pathological tissues of patients. It’s presently at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy.  Recently, the Italian police raided their home, and the police took all  digital assets that were owned by the the two nanopathologists including their laptops, computers, and flash-drives; basically years of work and research.  James Grundvig via the World Mercury Project describes what happened quite well:  “Because Gatti and Montanari had taken their research of nanodust and nanoparticles, from in-vivo (performed in a living organism) and in-vitro (performed in a test tube) to what unseen contamination might reside in vaccines in 2016, they came under the microscope of the United States, European, and Italian authorities. They had touched the third rail of medicine. They had crossed the no-go zone with the purported crime being scientific research and discovery. By finding nano-contamination in random vaccines, Gatti and Montanari revealed, for the first time, what no one knew: Vaccines had more than aluminum salts adjuvants, Polysorbate-80, and other inorganic chemicals in them, they also harbored stainless steel, tungsten, copper, and other metals and rare elements that don’t belong in shots given to fetuses, pregnant women, newborns, babies and toddlers developing their lungs, immune and nervous systems.”  The scientists published their work in January of 2017, titled, New Quality‐Control Investigations on Vaccines: Micro‐ and Nanocontamination. If science wasn’t plagued by corruption, an investigation would have started, healthcare agencies would be involved, and vaccine safety policies would have come under intense scrutiny, but that never happened.  You can read more about this story and access an interview with the scientists here.  There are numerous vaccine safety issues. The bioaccumulation of various vaccine ingredients, for example, are one. Ingredients like aluminum have been added to vaccines for more than 100 years under the assumption that they are safe. It’s only within the last couple years that scientists decided to look to see where these ingredients go after being injected. They found that aluminum, when injected, doesn’t exit the body, it actually travels to distant organs and the brain. You can access those studies and read more about that here. You can also watch a short video from Dr. Christopher Shaw from the University of British Colombia explaining the difference between injectable aluminum and the aluminum our body takes in from food. Here is another related study you can read that goes into further detail.  The main point I’m trying to make is that no parent should ever be made to feel guilty for not vaccinating their children. Vaccines are clearly not as safe as they’re marketed to be, and it’s important that we ask ourselves why this type of information goes virtually unacknowledged by the masses.


latimes--2019-11-04--10 million pot plants worth $1 billion destroyed in Kern County

Authorities in Kern County destroyed about 10 million marijuana plants being grown under the guise of industrial hemp.  Investigators with the Kern County Sheriff’s Office seized the plants, which they estimate to have a street value of more than $1 billion, from 11 fields in the Arvin area on Oct. 25, according to a news release from the Sheriff’s Office. The seizure was first reported by the Bakersfield Californian.  Industrial hemp is a variety of cannabis sativa plant that has much lower levels of the psychoactive chemical THC than are found in marijuana. Industrial hemp grown for commercial sale must, by law, contain no more than 0.3% THC, though there’s an exemption for hemp grown for research purposes, the Sheriff’s Office said.  The plants seized by investigators were being grown for commercial consumption and contained THC contents “well over” the legal limit, meaning that they “were in fact cannabis,” the sheriff’s office said. Kern County voted to ban commercial cannabis activity in 2017.  No arrests were made, and authorities haven’t determined whether they’ll seek charges, a spokeswoman for the Sheriff’s Office said. The investigation remains ongoing. It was conducted jointly with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the FBI.


naturalnews--2019-03-18--Plants can remember environmental changes and adapt researchers discover

Plants can "remember" environmental changes and adapt, researchers discover

(Natural News) No plant in the world has a feature that’s remotely similar to a brain. However, British researchers recently found out that flowering plants contained proteins that can store information about changes in their environment, such as shifts in temperatures when one season gave way to another.  These data served as “memories” for a plant. When the plant experienced stimuli that matched what it “remembered” from the past, it would respond accordingly.  These PRC2 proteins can be found in cereals and vegetables, both of which are important plants for making food. Researchers from the University of Birmingham and the University of Nottingham believed that the memory function was vital to a plant’s success in acclimatizing to a new and different kind of environment.  The memory-storing proteins allowed plants to effectively oversee their activities in response to external stimuli like stress or seasonal change. A plant that experienced the long periods of cold temperatures during winter will “know” that it should only start growing delicate flowers when the weather was warmer. (Related: The Swiss Army knife of plants — why sea buckthorn oil is such a powerful remedy.)  The PRC2 proteins combined into a structure whenever the temperature grew cold. They were also responsible for getting the plant to produce flowers. However, there was little information on the means used by this group of proteins to detect environmental changes.  Support our mission and enhance your own self-reliance: The laboratory-verified Organic Emergency Survival Bucket provides certified organic, high-nutrition storable food for emergency preparedness. Completely free of corn syrup, MSG, GMOs and other food toxins. Ultra-clean solution for years of food security. Learn more at the Health Ranger Store.  The Birmingham-Nottingham researchers investigated the ability of PRC2 proteins in Arabidopsis thaliana to evaluate the conditions of the environment. They found that the structure heavily relied on a particular protein called VRN2.  VRN2 displayed high instability. It broke down at a steady rate under hospitable conditions, such as warm weather and the presence of more than enough oxygen.  However, the behavior of the protein drastically changed once the environmental conditions got worse. During floods that cut off the supply of oxygen, the stability of VRN2 greatly increased. In turn, this improved the chances of the plant to survive the crisis.  Furthermore, the VRN2 protein increased in number during winter conditions. Once spring arrived, the accrued amounts of VRN2 made it easy for the PRC2 protein complex to activate the flowering process.  Curious as to why the protein accumulated during cold weather, the researchers compared the plant’s response to cold temperatures and its reaction to oxygen shortages during flooding. They were surprised by the similarities between the two responses, given the differences in their respective stimuli.  Birmingham researcher Daniel Gibbs stated that the ability to sense and recall environmental changes was of critical importance for plants. The organism depended on this protein-based “memory” so that it could successfully reproduce and create a new generation of plants.  “VRN2 is continually being broken down when it is not needed, but accumulates under the right environmental conditions,” Gibbs said in a press release. “In this way, VRN2 directly senses and responds to signals from the environment, and the PRC2 remains inactive until required.”  His Nottingham colleague and co-author, Michael Holdsworth, said that they were planning to look into the reason as to why VRN2 proteins become much more stable when it got colder. They also want to determine why the plant reacted to cold temperatures in the same way it did when confronted with a flooded environment.  The PRC2 protein complex was also present in animals. However, animal PRC2 lacked the unstable VRN2 protein.  “This system appears to have evolved specifically in flowering plants,” said Holdsworth. “Perhaps it gives them more flexibility in their ability to adapt and respond to environmental change, which is important since they are fixed in the ground and can’t move.”


naturalnews--2019-09-19--Plants from the laurel family found to exhibit potent antiviral properties

![Image: Plants from the laurel family found to exhibit potent antiviral properties](wp-content/uploads/sites/91/2019/09/Hiv-Blood-Cells-Aids.jpg)  * * *  ([Natural News](https://www.naturalnews.com)) The genus _Litsea_ is comprised of evergreen or deciduous trees or shrubs that belong to the Lauraceae (laurel) family. It contains about 200 plant species, and some of them have been used in traditional Chinese medicine to treat traumatic injuries and relieve symptoms of pain. From this genus,Â  _Litsea verticillata_ was the first plant species identified by theÂ  _National Institutes of Health_ (NIH)-funded International Cooperative Biodiversity Group (ICBG) project to have anti-HIV activities. In an effort to explore the antiviral properties of other Litsea species, ICBG researchers from the U.S., Hong Kong, and Vietnam evaluated nine other plants for their anti-HIV and cytotoxic activities. They discovered that some of them exhibit [potent inhibitory effects against HIV replication](https://www.science.news/2019-07-09-litsea-species-tcm-shows- promise-as-antiviral.html). The results of their study were published inÂ _The American Journal of Chinese Medicine_.  ## Litsea andÂ its bioactiveÂ components  Plants that belong to the genus _Litsea_ are mainly [distributed in tropical and subtropical regions](https://kundoc.com/pdf-the-genus-litsea-in- traditional-chinese-medicine-an-ethnomedical-phytochemical-a.html) around the world. In China, 74 Litsea species have been found, and 20 of them have a long history of use in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). The ancient Chinese used the fruits of these plants to treat gastrointestinal diseases, [asthma](https://naturalpedia.com/asthma-causes-side-effects-and-treatments- at-naturalpedia-com.html), and traumatic injuries. The leaves, stems, velamina, roots, and barks, on the other hand, were used to treat stomachache, colds, pain, [arthritis](https://naturalpedia.com/arthritis-causes-side- effects-and-treatments-at-naturalpedia-com.html), and diarrhea.  Several studies have been done on the phytochemical content and pharmacological properties of different _Litsea_ species used in TCM. To date, researchers have identified more than 200 active compounds that are present in these medicinal plants. These active components include flavonoids, terpenoids, alkaloids, butanolides and butenolactones, lignans, amides, steroids, fatty acids, and megastigmanes, among others. Of these, [flavonoids](https://naturalpedia.com/flavonoids-sources-health-benefits-and- uses.html) and terpenoids contribute the most to the therapeutic potential shown by Litsea plants.  [![ebook](https://www.naturalnews.com/Images/Heart-Disease- Ebook-150.png)](https://prevent-and-reverse-heart-disease.naturalnews.com) | _**Discover how to prevent and reverse heart disease (and other cardio related events) with this free ebook** : Written by popular Natural News writer Vicki Batt, this book includes [everything you need to know](https://prevent-and- reverse-heart-disease.naturalnews.com) about preventing heart disease, reversing hypertension, and nurturing your cardiac health without medication. [Learn More.](https://prevent-and-reverse-heart-disease.naturalnews.com)_   ---|---      Flavonoids are [polyphenolic plant compounds](https://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic /dietary-factors/phytochemicals/flavonoids) present in many fruits and vegetables. They affect cell-signaling pathways and exhibit anti-inflammatory, anti-thrombogenic, anti-diabetic, anti-cancer, and neuroprotective activities. Litsea plant species that are rich in flavonoids includeÂ  _L. cubeba_ , _L. glutinosa_ , andÂ  _L. coreana_. According to numerous studies, the flavonoids isolated from _L. coreana_ have anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and hepatoprotective properties.  Terpenoids, on the other hand, are a [modified class of terpenes](https://www.intechopen.com/books/terpenes-and-terpenoids /introductory-chapter-terpenes-and-terpenoids) used to treat a variety of diseases and can be classified into the following:    * **Monoterpenes** â naturally present in essential oils; have antiseptic, antiviral, and antibacterial properties   * **Sesquiterpenes** â potent antimicrobial, antiviral, and anti-insecticidal agents   * **Diterpenes** â exhibit anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, anticancer, and antifungal activities   * **Sesterpenes** â can be found in fungus, marine organisms, insects, sponges, lichens, and insect wax; also possess anti-inflammatory, anticancer, antimicrobial, and antifungal properties   * **Triterpenes** â derived from squalene biosynthetic pathway; can be converted into [saponins, which have anti-tumor](https://www.phytochemicals.info/phytochemicals/saponins.php), antimutagenic, cholesterol-lowering, antimicrobial, antioxidant, and osteoprotective activities.   * **Meroterpenes** â present in animals, plants, bacteria, and fungi; exhibits anti-inflammatory and anticancer activities  ## Litsea species are rich sources ofÂ antiviral compounds  In a previous study, researchers involved with the ICBG discovered eight novel compoundsÂ â prototypic sesquiterpenes â that exhibit anti-HIV activities.Â In subsequent studies, they identifiedÂ 26 additional compoundsÂ with different structural types from the plant. They also discovered two newÂ litseanes, litseaverticillols L and M, and a new sesquiterpene butenolide, litseasesquibutenolide.Â They reported thatÂ litseaverticillols L and M inhibitÂ HIV-1 replication.Â To further explore the antiviral properties ofÂ _L.Â verticillata_ , the researchers evaluatedÂ several relatively abundant isolates, including a litseane compound, two eudesmane sesquiterpenes, and three lignans by testing them against an additional 21 viral targets.Â They found that lignans 8 and 9 are active againstÂ Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV), a member of the [herpes](https://naturalpedia.com/herpes-causes-side-effects- and-treatments-at-naturalpedia-com.html) family that causes [infectious mononucleosis](https://www.cdc.gov/epstein-barr/about-mono.html). Typical symptoms of this diseaseÂ include extreme fatigue, fever, swollen lymph nodes, swollen liver or spleen, and rashes.  Since many antiviral compounds have already been discovered inÂ  _L.Â verticillata_ _,_ for the current study,Â the researchers prepared 38 plant extracts from different parts of nineÂ otherÂ Litsea species and evaluated their [anti-HIV and cytotoxic activities](https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0192415X16500166). They reported that four extracts from three different Litsea species showed 97â100 percent inhibitory effects against HIV replication. These extracts also did notÂ show cytotoxicity to a panel of human cell lines at a concentration of 20 micrograms per milliliter (ug/mL). Based on their findings, the researchers concluded that the Litsea species areÂ [good plant sources of antiviral compounds](http://phytonutrients.news)Â that can be usedÂ against harmful viral infections,Â including [HIV](https://naturalpedia.com /hiv-causes-side-effects-and-treatments-at-naturalpedia-com.html). (Related:Â [HIV-1 people can boost their immune system with Korean red ginseng](https://www.naturalnews.com/2019-01-05-hiv-1-people-can-boost-their- immune-system-with-korean-red-ginseng.html).)  **Sources include:**  [Science.news](https://www.science.news/2019-07-09-litsea-species-tcm-shows- promise-as-antiviral.html)  [Kundoc.com](https://kundoc.com/pdf-the-genus-litsea-in-traditional-chinese- medicine-an-ethnomedical-phytochemical-a.html)  [LPI.OregonState.edu](https://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/dietary- factors/phytochemicals/flavonoids)  [IntechOpen.com](https://www.intechopen.com/books/terpenes-and-terpenoids /introductory-chapter-terpenes-and-terpenoids)  [Phytochemicals.info](https://www.phytochemicals.info/phytochemicals/saponins.php)  [CDC.gov](https://www.cdc.gov/epstein-barr/about-mono.html)  [WorldScientific.com](https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0192415X16500166)


npr--2019-03-10--Scientists Thread A Nano-Needle To Modify The Genes Of Plants

An artist's rendering shows a needle-like carbon nanotube delivering DNA through the wall of a plant cell. It also may be possible to use this method to inject a gene editing tool called CRISPR to alter a plant's characteristics for breeding. **Courtesy of Markita del Carpio Landry** ****hide caption****  ****toggle caption****  Courtesy of Markita del Carpio Landry  An artist's rendering shows a needle-like carbon nanotube delivering DNA through the wall of a plant cell. It also may be possible to use this method to inject a gene editing tool called CRISPR to alter a plant's characteristics for breeding.  Courtesy of Markita del Carpio Landry  Is there an efficient way to tinker with the genes of plants? Being able to do that would make breeding new varieties of crop plants faster and easier, but figuring out exactly _how_ to do it has stumped plant scientists for decades.  Now researchers may have cracked it.  Modifying the genetics of a plant requires getting DNA into its cells. That's fairly easy to do with animal cells, but with plants it's a different matter.  "Plants have not just a cell membrane, but also a cell wall," says [Markita Landry](https://chemistry.berkeley.edu/faculty/cbe/landry), assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of California, Berkeley.  Scientists have tried different ways to get DNA and other important biological molecules through the cell wall – by shooting microscopic gold bullets coated with DNA into the cell using a [gene gun](http://passel.unl.edu/pages/informationmodule.php?idinformationmodule=958077244&topicorder=3&maxto=7) or by hiding DNA inside [bacteria](http://passel.unl.edu/pages/informationmodule.php?idinformationmodule=958077244&topicorder=4&maxto=7&minto=1) that can infect plant cells.  Both methods have limitations. Gene guns aren't very efficient, and some plants are hard, if not impossible, to infect with bacteria.  UC Berkeley researchers have found a way to do it using something called carbon nanotubes, long stiff tubes of carbon that are really small. Landry came up with the idea, and the curious thing is she's neither a nanotechnology engineer nor a plant biologist.  "I'm a physicist," Landry says. "When I started my lab at Berkeley two years ago, my lab was focused exclusively on imaging between cells."  Markita Landry, assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, came up with the idea of using carbon nanotubes to get DNA into plant cells. **Courtesy of Marcelo Perez del Carpio** ****hide caption****  ****toggle caption****  Courtesy of Marcelo Perez del Carpio  Markita Landry, assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, came up with the idea of using carbon nanotubes to get DNA into plant cells.  Courtesy of Marcelo Perez del Carpio  She was planning to use carbon nanotubes as kind of external scaffolding around the cells to make it easier to see what was going on between them. "This was a project that failed pretty hard and pretty quick, because instead of staying outside of the plant cells as we had presumed, these nanotubes were going straight into the cells," Landry says.  So in the spirit of corporate management gurus, she turned a problem into an opportunity.  "We flipped it around and made it a DNA delivery platform instead," she says.  A strand of DNA is small enough to slip through the plant cell wall, but it's not rigid enough. "You can kind of think of it like a floppy string," Landry says. "If you try to push a floppy string through a sponge, it's not really going to work, but if you take a solid needle and try to push it through a sponge, that will work much better."  Attaching the DNA to the carbon nanotube gives you that nano-needle.  But that DNA only affects the single cell and lasts for just a few days before it degrades. To make a permanent change, you need to affect the plant's genome using a gene editing tool such as as CRISPR.  Landry says it also might be possible to use nanotubes to deliver CRISPR. Once inside a cell, from let's say an apple tree, CRISPR could, for example, turn off a gene that causes browning in apples.  "We would end up with an apple tree whose apples don't go brown when you cut into them," Landry says.  The idea of using carbon nanotubes to get DNA into plant cells is intriguing to some scientists, but "I think they've got a little ways to go to make it really interesting," says [Laura Bartley](https://www.ou.edu/cas/mpbio/people/faculty/bartley), associate professor of plant biology at the University of Oklahoma.  Bartley says it will be important to show that the method works in different varieties of plants besides the two Landry describes in a [recent paper](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2018/01/30/179549.full.pdf) in _Nature Nanotechnology:_ arugula and wheat. But she's impressed that the new approach appears to be able to get DNA into grass plants such as wheat.  "If it works the way they think it does, I can imagine a lot of people wanting to use that," Bartley says.  In fact, she says she's thinking about trying the invention in her work on grass plants.


npr--2019-06-21--Music For Plants Is Real Even If The Science Isnt

Music For Plants Is Real (Even If The Science Isn't)  At the dawn of the 1970s, Mort Garson installed a Moog synthesizer in his Laurel Canyon home studio. In those early days of Moogs, the modular synthesizer was a massive piece of equipment — a dizzying wall of knobs and inputs. "It looked like a switchboard from the 1940s," Garson's daughter Day Darmet remembers. "It was just huge, with all these wires. My mom and I thought that he had really lost it."  Garson self-released the album Mother Earth's Plantasia in 1976. He used his Moog to create the suitably groovy vibe of each of its 10 instrumental tracks. "Concerto for Philodendron & Pothos" twinkles like the first stars to emerge after a sunset. "Symphony for a Spider Plant" bubbles with wonder. "A Mellow Mood for Maidenhair" bears traces of a psychedelic awakening. But the stated audience of this strange but soothing music was not people. It was for plants.  Befitting its esoteric origins, Plantasia was only sold at the Mother Earth plant store on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles, or it came for free if you ordered a Simmons mattress from Sears. Plantasia's cheeky liner notes were written by Mother Earth's owners, Lynn and Joel Rapp, who were members of the TV industry before they turned to selling ferns and ficuses. In the description for the title song, they told an apocryphal tale: "[A] professor took three identical sets of plants and put them in three rooms under identical growing conditions. In the first room, he played only classical music and those plants thrived; in the second room, he played only rock music and those plants thrived; in the third room he played only the news. Those plants died. Let that one grow on you while you listen ... ."  Though it wasn't the first album touted as being for plants, collectors have been on the lookout for copies of Plantasia for decades. In recent years its desirability has only increased. Records and CDs have been bootlegged and the audio has been uploaded to YouTube without permission. Original vinyl copies get posted on the resale site Discogs for hundreds of dollars. But now, Plantasia has finally gotten an official rerelease by the Brooklyn-based Sacred Bones Records, with streaming services picking it up this spring and physical copies arriving today.  Sacred Bones owner Caleb Braaten first heard Plantasia in the early 2000s, when he was working at the record store Twist & Shout in Denver. A coworker told him about a cheap copy in the used bin, since he knew Braaten was into old, weird electronic records, like Wendy Carlos' soundtrack for A Clockwork Orange. The appeal of Plantasia was instantaneous for him. "There's something about it: It hits these nostalgic sensors in your brain that make it feel so warm and familiar, but it's kind of from another planet at the same time," Braaten says.  Plantasia arrived three years after the release of Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird's book The Secret Life of Plants, which appeared on The New York Times' bestselling nonfiction list amongst titles like The Joy of Sex and How to Be Your Own Best Friend. In The Secret Life of Plants, Tompkins and Bird recounted experiments conducted around the planet that supposedly proved that plants were far more complex and cosmically attuned beings than most humans imagined. One of its central claims was that the health and productivity of plants could be affected not only by playing music for them, but by what kind of music you played for them.  With this notion vibrating through the consciousness, artists began making compositions designed specifically for plants, in tribute to plants, or in collaboration with plants. Prolific French composer Roger Roger released the electronic-classical hybrid De la Musique et des Secrets pour Enchanter vos Plantes (Music and Secrets to Enchant Your Plants). Even Stevie Wonder embraced these ideas at the end of his transcendent run of albums in the 1970s, resulting in Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants, his double-disc soundtrack for the documentary film version of Tompkins and Bird's book. Solange is a noted fan of Wonder's collection, and during a recent conversation that streamed on Apple Music, she called her latest album, When I Get Home, "[A] tribute to that record and what it did for me."  Though Garson's album came out before Wonder's, his background didn't necessarily indicate he'd be the type of guy to embrace this kind of new age thinking. Garson wasn't from a musical family — his parents bought a baby grand piano and installed it in their New York City house's living room just for decoration. But Garson showed an early natural ability on the instrument, and later, all instruments. He graduated from Juilliard before serving in World World II, and then entered the music business. After Ruby and the Romantics' "Our Day Will Come," a song he co-wrote, knocked The Four Seasons' "Walk Like a Man" from the top of Billboard's singles chart in 1963, Garson moved his family to Los Angeles. There he arranged songs for decidedly square artists like Doris Day and Mel Tormé. The plaintive strings on Glen Campbell's "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" are his. He made songs for commercials and game shows, and used a Moog to create a piece that soundtracked the first TV footage of the Apollo 11 crew walking on the moon.  As the 1960s got more far out, so did his output. He composed the music for The Zodiac: Cosmic Sounds, an album conceptualized by Elektra Records owner Jac Holzman where each of the 12 songs was dedicated to a different astrological sign. (DJ Shadow used a snatch of the track about Cancer for his 1996 album Entroducing......) He put together a goofball retelling of The Wizard of Oz called The Wozard of Iz. (The Avalanches sampled it and used its name on their 2016 return, Wildflower.) As Garson's two children entered adulthood, he turned to his Moog to indulge his even deeper experimental tendencies, first with a dark conceptual piece called Black Mass under the name Lucifer, and then the breezier Mother Earth's Plantasia.  Though the Secret Life of Plants book found believers among a growing movement of people who'd embraced the green revolution or were dabbling in mysticism, Garson's daughter thinks he was more inspired by his wife, Peggy, an avid gardener who taught her children about humans' connection to the natural world long before such thinking became trendy. Still, Darmet acknowledges that Plantasia was probably more of a thought exercise for her father, rather than an actual attempt to make music for the benefit of plants. "I don't think he sat and put a plant in front of him while he was creating the music and measured it every day to see if it was growing an inch or so," she says. "I think it was purely conceptual."  Even if Wonder was the more popular figure, his Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants may be an even stranger listen than Plantasia. Wonder spent the 1970s finding the glories of what pop music could be with albums like Talking Book and Innervisions (often with the help of his own Moog). After ending his prolific run with the 1976 double-album masterwork Songs in the Key of Life, Wonder didn't put out new music under own name until his Plants soundtrack arrived at the end of '79.  Listeners were largely flummoxed by it, as Wonder narrated a song from the perspective of a bug caught in the jaws of a Venus flytrap and sang a tender love ballad to a literal black orchid. It features vocals in Japanese and Mali's Bambara language. Many of the tracks are instrumental. For the listener, it often feels as though Wonder used this album to totally indulge himself creatively. As with many superstars' "misunderstood" albums of the period, there are now those who champion Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants for its bold choices and lack of pandering. Others would still rather hum "You Are the Sunshine of My Life" to their petunias.  Over time, most of the experiments referenced in The Secret Life of Plants book were discredited. They weren't designed to rule out other explanations that were equally plausible and their results couldn't be replicated by other researchers. Nowadays, most academics regard the book as pseudoscience. "We know that [plants] have all the same kind of senses we do, but they don't have specialized organs for them," explains Heidi Appel, a plant biologist and professor at the University of Toledo. "People always underestimate plants at one level, because they aren't like us, and yet our propensity to anthropomorphize everything — to project the way we see the world, we view the world, we think about the world — on other things that are not human means that we also have this ability to overestimate what plants can do."  Appel's own work with University of Missouri professor Rex Cocroft showed that an Arabidopsis thaliana plant indeed produces more chemical defenses when it hears the sound of a munching caterpillar, but that doesn't mean it feels any kind of way about it. "The premise that plants communicate within themselves with chemicals and electrical signalling has been well demonstrated now. It's just that they don't have emotions," she says.  Still, in recent years, a new generation of artists, many with connections to the ambient electronic music community, have embraced the idea of making music in highly specialized ways to foster a connection with plants. Among them is Kurt Attard of Australia's Brainwave Power Music, whose YouTube channel has over half a million subscribers. He used "binaural beats and isochronic tones" for several videos aimed towards plants; combined they currently have over 800 thousand plays. In Germany, B. Ashra's Music for Growing was made specifically for nurturing hemp plants by using what he calls THC's "molecular frequency" of 10.77 Hz. David Edren of Belgium was inspired directly by Garson's Plantasia when he made Music for Mimosa Pudica & Codariocalyx, a sprightly minimalist project dedicated to a pair of houseplants he kept in his home. "The album invoked an extra layer of focus in my life and work," says Edren, "which is gentleness and positiveness towards all beings around us."  Others have figured out how to get the plants themselves to create new sounds. Data Garden was started as a zero-waste record label, but its founders soon realized they were generating the most interest with the installations they would set up at festivals and museums where plants were connected to custom-made hardware to generate harmonious tones. This Venice, Los Angeles-based duo of Joe Patitucci and Jon Shapiro developed (and sell) a device called the MIDI Sprout that translates plants' electrical impulses into musical notes.  "Sometimes I would hear people talk about accessing this creative force of the universe while they're playing an instrument; it's just like the universe is flowing through them," Patitucci says. "I never had that ability with an instrument, but I felt like I could really allow the universe to express itself through my music by designing a system to allow the universe to express itself through plants."  As the planet faces impending ecological crises, plants are seen as one of our greatest allies to combat climate change. After years of mistreatment, many artists may feel like it's time to normalize relations between humankind or plant life, or at least do something to foster a greater bond. "We're at this pivotal moment where people are understanding that the only way to come back into harmony with our environment is to realize that we're not separate from it," Patitucci says.  This renewed interest in plant-based music also comes at the same time that the houseplant industry is booming. To capitalize on this demand, there are entire side industries of plant management apps and plant delivery services for a new generation of obsessive plant owners. Everyone has their own way of coping with possible cataclysmic doom. "In Brooklyn where I live, there's a f****** new plant store on every corner. It's the new coffee shop," says Sacred Bones' Braaten, who admits that he, too, loves gardening.  Appel recognizes and appreciates the creativity of plant-based music. While she notes that all the emotional work is one-sided, that doesn't mean the plants won't be rewarded from this attention. "Forming connections with plants or any other kind of living thing is very beneficial to humans. Creating that atmosphere that makes the human more relaxed, creative, productive — all the things that we know music can do for us — is great," she says. "[And] if we connect with other organisms, we take care of them better. So they may even grow better — not because of music, but because of our sense of connection to them."  Mort Garson, who died in 2008, never made another album about plants after Mother Earth's Plantasia. With less interest in doing commercial projects, he stopped getting offers for TV game show intros or exploitation film soundtracks. He sold his Moog by the end of the '70s, but he happily kept following his own inspirations. He wrote a musical about Marilyn Monroe that opened in London in 1983, and after he moved to San Francisco, he created an operetta about the city's neighborhoods. Braaten has been sorting out the legal rights to Garson's music for about four years now, and Plantasia is the first of several reissues of his music that Sacred Bones has planned. Meanwhile the plants of the world, for now, keep growing.


sottnet--2019-11-09--House plants aren't purifying the air - major review

Filling your house with potted plants happier and more productive , but it's not going to make the air you breathe any cleaner. That is, unless you had a ludicrous number of indoor plants: somewhere between 10 and 1,000 for every square metre of your living space.A critical review, drawing on 30 years of research, has once again found that houseplants have little - if any - real value as air removers.Obviously, that's not a smart use of space. Even one plant per square metre is ineffective and impractical for most people.If you wanted to improve air quality in your house beyond what windows, doors or a normal building's air handling system can do, you'd need roughly a hundred plants per square metre, the authors say. And nobody has the time, space or patience to accommodate that much greenery."This has been a common misconception for some time," says environmental engineer Michael Waring at Drexel University."Plants are great, butof your home or office environment."But a small sealed chamber is very different to a real indoor environment in a big building. Over time, the NASA study and subsequent research has been largely taken out of context.In a normal building, the authors argue, stale indoor air is continuously being replaced with fresh air from the outdoors, orders of magnitude faster than the chamber experiments.The authors demonstrated this by taking 196 experimental results and translating them into clean air delivery rates (CADR). Using this metric, they calculated that for nearly all the studies,"The CADR is the standard metric used for scientific study of the impacts of air purifiers on indoor environments," says Waring, "but many of the researchers conducting these studies were not looking at them from an environmental engineering perspective and did not understand how building air exchange rates interplay with the plants to affect indoor air quality."While a few of the studies did measure real indoor environments, Waring and Cummings say the equipment they used was prone to inaccuracies and they used unrealistically high concentrations of toxic pollutants. What's more, absolutely none of them controlled or measured the outdoor air exchange rate."Only two publications were found that not only acknowledge these issues, but explicitly refute the notion that common houseplants improve indoor air quality," they write These two studies were also written by indoor air and building scientists. Andthey wrote at the time."It is not possible to obtain meaningful quantitative results of pollutant removal in a field study without also measuring ventilation rates. The ventilation rate variability in most buildings is simply too large a confounder."A decade later, Cummings and Waring are in strong agreement. In a building with an extremely low air flow and under the most generous CADR assumptions, they found one potted plant per square metre might achieve 20 percent effectiveness. But that number quickly falls when the air exchange rate is changed even a little bit.Still, it's important that researchers and the media don't extrapolate such findings to real world environments. Filling your house with plants may make you feel great, but you don't have to do it just to make an impact on air quality. Especially when you consider"This is certainly an example of how scientific findings can be misleading or misinterpreted over time," Waring says "But it's also a great example of how scientific research should continually reexamine and question findings to get closer to the ground truth of understanding what's actually happening around us."The study was published in the Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology


sottnet--2019-12-07--Recordings reveal that plants make ultrasonic squeals when stressed

Although it has been revealed in recent years that plants are capable of seeing, hearing and smelling , they are still usually thought of as silent. But now, for the first time, they have been recorded making airborne sounds when stressed, which researchers say could open up a new field of precision agriculture where farmers listen for water-starved crops."These findings can alter the way we think about the plant kingdom, which has been considered to be almost silent until now," they write in their study, which has not yet been published in a journal.On average, drought-stressed tomato plants made 35 sounds an hour, while tobacco plants made 11. When plant stems were cut, tomato plants made an average of 25 sounds in the following hour, and tobacco plants 15. Unstressed plants produced fewer than one sound per hour, on average.Although Khait and his colleagues only looked at tomato and tobacco plants, they believe other plants may make sounds when stressed too. In a preliminary study, they also recorded ultrasonic sounds from a spiny pincushion cactus (Mammillaria spinosissima) and the weed henbit dead-nettle (Lamium amplexicaule). Cavitation is a possible explanation for how the plants generate the sounds, they say.Enabling farmers to listen for water-stressed plants could "open a new direction in the field of precision agriculture", the researchers suggest. They add that such an ability will be increasingly important as climate change exposes more areas to drought "The suggestion that the sounds that drought-stressed plants make could be used in precision agriculture seems feasible if it is not too costly to set up the recording in a field situation," says Anne Visscher at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in the UK.She warns that the results can't yet be broadened out to other stresses, such as salt or temperature, because these may not lead to sounds. In addition, there have been no experiments to show whether moths or any other animal can hear and respond to the sounds the plants make, so that idea remains speculative for now, she says.If plants are making sounds when stressed, cavitation is the most likely mechanism, says Edward Farmer at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. But he is sceptical of the findings, and would like to see more in the way of controls.Farmer adds that the idea moths might be listening to plants and shunning stressed ones is a "little too speculative", and there are already plenty of explanations for why insects avoid some plants and not others.


theindependent--2019-01-16--First plants ever grown on moon have now died says Chinese scientist

First plants ever grown on moon have now died, says Chinese scientist

Just 24 hours after releasing photographs of the first ever plants grown on the moon, China has revealed the tender green shoots are now all dead.  The cotton plants had been the only seeds to sprout inside their aluminium container, known as a “moon surface micro-ecological circle”, which cost more than 10 million yuan (£1.15m). But the probe is now in lunar night, and temperatures have fallen too low for life to survive.  The Chang’e-4 probe, which landed on the far-side of the moon on 3 January, apparently entered “sleep mode” on Sunday as the first lunar night after the probe’s landing fell, Professor Xie Gengxin, chief designer of the experiment, told China’s Xinhua state news agency.  “Life in the canister would not survive the lunar night,” Professor Xie said.  It is not clear why, if the Chinese space agency knew the falling of the lunar night would kill the plants on Sunday, their death was not announced along with the successful germination of the seeds on Tuesday.  Other reports have suggested the pod was supposed to last three months and create a self-sustaining environment for life away from our planet.  The South China Morning Post even said the China National Space Administration planned to broadcast such an experiment in “less than a hundred days’ time”.  The moon lander was carrying soil, cotton seeds, rock cress, rapeseed and potato seeds, yeast and fruit fly eggs.  On Tuesday Professor Liu Hanlong of Chongqing University, who led the research, said the rapeseed and potato seeds had also germinated, but the cotton seeds were first to sprout, according to the South China Morning Post.  Cotton plants seen sprouting on the left hand side of the picture are the first seeds to germinate on the Moon (AFP/Getty )  “We have given consideration to future survival in space. Learning about these plants’ growth in a low-gravity environment would allow us to lay the foundation for our future establishment of space base,” Mr Liu said.  The report gave no indication the plants had already all died.  It also said the 3kg aluminium container was designed to maintain a temperature of between 1 and 30 degrees, allow in natural light and feed the plants with water and a nutrient solution.  It did not add that when lunar night fell, its contents would all be killed.  The experiment was in part designed to provide an indication of how lengthier space voyages could maintain food sources for astronauts without them having to return to Earth for supplies.


theindependent--2019-09-11--The scientist who aposspeaks to plantsapos to help stop climate change

The scientist who 'speaks to plants' to help stop climate change

Monica Gagliano says that she has received Yoda-like advice from trees and shrubbery. She recalls being rocked like a baby by the spirit of a fern. She has ridden on the back of an invisible bear conjured by an osha root. She once accidentally bent space and time while playing the ocarina, an ancient wind instrument, in a redwood forest. “Oryngham,” she says, means “thank you” in plant language. These interactions have taken place in dreams, visions, songs and telekinetic interactions, sometimes with the help of shamans or ayahuasca.  This has all gone on around the same time as Gagliano’s scientific research, which has broken boundaries in the field of plant behaviour and signalling. Currently at the University of Sydney in Australia, she has published a number of studies that support the view that plants are, to some extent, intelligent. Her experiments suggest that they can learn behaviours and remember them. Her work also suggests that plants can “hear” running water and even produce clicking noises, perhaps to communicate.  Plants have directly shaped her experiments and career path. In 2012, she says, an oak tree assured her that a risky grant application – proposing research on sound communication in plants – would be successful. “You are here to tell our stories,” the tree told her.  “These experiences are not like, ‘Oh you’re a weirdo, this is happening just to you,’” Gagliano says. Learning from plants, she says, is a long-documented ceremonial practice (if not one typically endorsed by scientists).  “This is part of the repertoire of human experiences,” she says. “We’ve been doing this forever and ever, and are still doing this.”  Gagliano knows that these claims, based on subjective experiences and not scientific evidence, can easily be read as delusional. She also knows that this could damage her scientific career – plant scientists in particular really hate this sort of thing. Back in 1973, an explosively popular book, The Secret Life of Plants, made pseudoscientific claims about plants, including that they enjoy classical music and can read human minds. The book was firmly discredited, but the maelstrom made many institutions and researchers reasonably wary of bold statements about botanical aptitude.  Regardless, last year Gagliano published a heady and meandering memoir about the conversations with plants that inspired her peer-reviewed work, titled Thus Spoke the Plant. She believes, like many scientists and environmentalists do, that in order to save the planet we have to understand ourselves as part of the natural world.  It’s just that she also believes the plants themselves can speak to this point.  “I want people to realise that the world is full of magic, but not as something only some people can do, or something that is outside of this world,” she says. “No, it’s all here.”  As environmental collapse looms, we’ve never known so much about life on earth – how extraordinary and intricate it all is, and how loose the boundary where “it” ends and “we” begin.  Language, for example, doesn’t seem to be limited to humans. Prairie dogs use adjectives (lots of them) and Alston’s singing mice, a species found in Central America, chirp “politely”. Ravens have demonstrated advanced planning, another blow to human exceptionalism, by bartering for food and selecting the best tools for future use.  The list goes on. Leaf-cutter ants not only invented farming a couple of million years before we did, but they also have their own landfills – and binmen. Even slime moulds can be said to make “decisions” and are so good at determining the most efficient route between resources that researchers have suggested we use them to help design highways.  But it may be plants whose capacities are the most head-rattling, if only because we tend to view them as decor. Plants can do a lot of things we cannot. Trees can clone themselves into 80,000-year-old superorganisms. Corn can summon wasps to attack caterpillars. But research suggests we also have some things in common. Plants share nutrients and recognise kin. They communicate with each other. They can count. They can feel you touching them.  So we know that plants respond to their environments in sophisticated, complex ways – “far more complex than most of us realised a few years ago”, says Ted Farmer, a botanist at University of Lausanne in Switzerland and one of the first to defend the concept of inter-plant communication.  Farmer is among those still “very” uncomfortable describing plants, which lack neurons, as “intelligent”. But now it’s “consciousness” – another word without a firm definition – that’s really raising hackles in the scientific community.  A group of biologists published a paper this in July with the matter-of-fact title “Plants Neither Possess Nor Require Consciousness”. The authors warned against anthropomorphism, and argued that proponents of plant consciousness have “consistently glossed over” the unique capacities of the brain. Though her book went unremarked upon, Gagliano’s experiments and statements ascribing feelings and subjectivity to plants were among those critiqued, and she was categorised witheringly within “a new wave of Romantic biology”.  Versions of this debate have been simmering for years. In 2013, Michael Pollan wrote about Gagliano presenting the results of an experiment to an incredulous audience.  That study is probably her most widely known. In it, she sought to discover whether plants, like animals, could demonstrate a basic type of learning called “habituation”.  The Mimosa pudica – you may know it as the “sensitive plant” – contracts its leaves when touched. So, in the experiment, potted mimosas were dropped a few harmless inches onto foam. At first, the leaves closed up immediately. But over time, they stopped reacting.  It was not that they were fatigued, Gagliano wrote, because, when the pots were shaken, the leaves closed up again. And when the dropping test was repeated a month later, their leaves remained unruffled.  The plants had “learned” that the drop was not a threat, Gagliano argued. The plants remembered.  And subsequent research has suggested that plants may indeed be capable of some type of memory. But Gagliano’s conclusion didn’t go over well at the time. Her framing of the data didn’t help. She insists that she doesn’t use metaphors in her work, and that “learning” is the best description we have for what took place, even if we don’t know how the plants are doing it.  This experiment was “a remarkable piece of work”, Pollan says. “Humans do tend to underestimate plants, and she’s one of a small group of scientists who are trying to change that story.”  Dr Heidi Appel, a scientist who found that rock cress produce more defensive chemicals when exposed to the stressful sound of a caterpillar chewing, says: “Monica is a brilliant young woman, and she’s been a major idea generator in the field of plant sensory biology. We’re investigating things I don’t think we would have otherwise.”  But, in Gagliano’s memoir, Appel says, “there’s a commingling of science and spiritual experiences that I feel are best disentangled”.  Pollan says: “I think it’s important to separate out what you can prove and what might be true in a more subjective way. And I don’t know where you draw the line, exactly.”  I meet Gagliano at an outdoor cafe in San Francisco, next to a pot filled with bright, chubby succulents. I find myself watching it, wondering if its inhabitants are aware that we are debating their awareness.  Gagliano grew up in northern Italy and is a marine ecologist by training. She spent her early career studying ambon damselfish at the Great Barrier Reef.  After months underwater observing the little fish, Gagliano says she started to suspect that they understood a lot more than she had thought – including that she was going to dissect them. A professional crisis ensued.  Plants were inching their way into her life. As Gagliano tells it, she had been volunteering at an herbalist’s clinic, and had begun using ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic brew that induces visions and emotional insights (and often nausea). She says that one day, sober, she was walking around her garden and heard, in her head, a plant suggest that she start studying plants.  In 2010, she travelled to Peru for the first time to work with a plant shaman called Don M.  To communicate with plants, Gagliano followed the dieta, or the shamanic method in the indigenous Amazonian tradition by which a human establishes a dialogue with a plant. The rules can vary, but it usually involves following a diet (no salt, alcohol, sugar or sex; some animal products may also be prohibited, depending on the culture) and drinking a plant concoction (sometimes hallucinogenic, sometimes not) in isolation for days, weeks or months. An icaro, or medicine song, is said to be shared by the plant, as well as visions and dreams, and the plant’s healing knowledge becomes a part of the human. It’s not fun, she warns.  Gagliano worked with multiple plant shamans, or vegetalistas, in Peru. There she bathed in the foul-smelling pulp of an ayahuma tree, which then designed a scientific experiment for her, instructing her to “train young plants in a maze and give them freedom of choice.” The ayahuma also helped her diagram a 2017 study investigating pea plants’ use of sound to detect water.  In the memoir, she wrote that she also travelled to California to work with a healthcare professional who conducts vision quest ceremonies (that’s when the oak tree spoke to her). She visited “the diviner,” a man trained by the Dagara people of Ghana and Burkina Faso to channel nature spirits.  At a certain point, Gagliano began going solo, “working with” plants like basil in her own veggie patch.  “Did you ever wonder if you were going insane?” I ask.  “Absolutely,” she says, and laughs. “I still do.” But she believes she should be free to talk openly about these experiences.  “Maybe we should admit that we hardly understand who we are, we hardly understand where we are at, we know very little compared to what there is to know,” she says. “To be open to explore and learn, I think that is the sign of wisdom, not of madness. And maybe wisdom and madness do look very similar, at some point.”  As a white woman on a journey through sampled bits of sacred rituals, Gagliano speaks thoughtfully and often about the legacies of colonialism, capitalism and exploitative New Age trends, which certainly includes the rise in ayahuasca retreats. A term like “shaman” can now bring to mind its plunder by an unpopular modern archetype – the personal-growth-obsessed wellness devotee, dreamily trailing sage in circles around her unvaccinated children.  But Gagliano’s journey, her supporters say, is rooted in a desire to challenge dominant assumptions.  “I have been working with the idea of plant intelligence for many years,” says Luis Eduardo Luna, an anthropologist and ayahuasca researcher in Brazil who has collaborated with Gagliano. Back in 1984, he published a paper in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology detailing the concept of plants as teachers in the Peruvian Amazon.  Luna says he was excited to hear these ideas expressed by a scientist, rather than someone in the humanities.  “Perhaps we are living in a much more interesting universe, perhaps we are living in a planet full of intelligent life,” Luna says. “I think it’s very important that we recover, somehow, this idea of the sacrality of nature, in the terrible situation in which we are today.”  Robin Wall Kimmerer, an author, botanist and State University of New York professor who is a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, says: “I’m really interested in the notion of plants as teachers, what we can learn from them as models. And that comes from my work with indigenous knowledge, because that is a fundamental assumption of indigenous environmental philosophy.”  Kimmerer doesn’t see Gagliano’s experiences as mystical processes so much as poorly understood ones.  “Some of the medicines that people have made are sophisticated biochemistry over a fire,” Kimmerer says. “You think, how in the world did people learn this? And the answer is almost always, ‘The plants told us how to do this.’ This is not a matter necessarily of walking in the woods and being tapped on the shoulder, but indigenous cultures have sophisticated protocols that are research protocols, in a sense, for learning from the plants. They involve fasting, ceremonial practices that bring one to a state of such openness to the conversations of other beings that you can hear them.”  I ask: “Have you ever had an experience like that?”  She says she has, preferring to leave it mostly at that. “Suffice it to say, I have had experiences of intense focus and attention with plants where I came away knowing something that I didn’t know before, and it’s quite incredible. You feel like, ‘Wow, where did that come from?’”  The problem with talking about these experiences, Kimmerer says, is that they “are grounded in a cultural context that is so different from western science that they are easily dismissed.”  Reality has become rather strange lately. Tech billionaires are trying to colonise the moon. UFOs appear to exist, in some capacity. Parents in conspiracy-minded Facebook groups are poisoning their autistic children with bleach. Reality TV has fused with politics. The future of the planet looks grim. (Or maybe we’re in a simulation.)  Gagliano’s more subjective claims may feed, in an unnatural time, a spiking hunger for naturally sourced answers. People are looking for “wisdom from nature”, Pollan says, when describing the rising interest in psychedelic compounds like ayahuasca and psilocybin mushrooms. The booming wellness industry is certainly packed with all things “natural” and “plant-based”. The novel that won the most recent Pulitzer Prize was inspired by a giant redwood that produced a “religious conversion”; caring for houseplants seems to be a national obsession.  Given this context, it’s logical that critique over her approach hasn’t stopped Gagliano from finding an audience. She spoke about plant intelligence at last year’s Bioneers Conference, and was invited to speak at last year’s Science and Nonduality conference, along with Deepak Chopra and Paul Stamets, a respected mycologist who believes that mushrooms are trying to communicate with humans through their hallucinogenic properties.  This summer, Gagliano sat on a sold-out panel called “Intelligence Without Brains” at the World Science Festival. There I eavesdropped on a woman excitedly explaining Pollan’s recent book on psychedelic therapy to her mother. Why had they come?  “We’re plant ladies!” said one, beaming. “There’s a lot about plants that we don’t know that might end up saving us, in some regard.”  Gagliano spoke about plants with pointed familiarity. In her telling, they became jaunty little characters; she used pronouns like “he” and “they” – never “it”.  At the festival, a young woman asked Gagliano how her scientific work had changed her understanding of the world.  “The main difference is that I used to live in a world of objects, and now I live in a world of subjects,” she said. There were murmurs of approval. “And so, I am never alone.”


thesun--2019-01-07--Plants may HEAR gardeners talking to them say scientists

Plants may HEAR gardeners talking to them, say scientists

IF YOU'RE a gardener who speaks to your shrubs, there's hope for you yet: A new study shows plants can hear.  Scientists found that some flowers listen for the buzz of a bee's wings and make their nectar sweeter if they hear it.  This entices the insects to visit more often, giving the plant a better chance of spreading its pollen.  The discovery boosts our understanding of the evolution of flowers and insects, say researchers at Tel Aviv University in Israel.  When they played recordings of bee buzzes to evening primrose flowers, the plants boosted the sugar content of their nectar.  But when played sounds at a higher frequency, like those made by a mosquito, the flowers did not change their nectar.  Researchers suggest that the sound of a bee makes tiny vibrations in flower petals that trigger the sugar response.  The finding is the first evidence that plants can respond to sounds in "an ecologically relevant way", scientists wrote in their study published on the website BioRxiv.  It hints that plantlife is also impacted by human-made noises, which may damage the ability of flowers and bees to communicate.  This is not the first time scientists have investigated the hearing ability of plants.  Research has found plants can also listen out for flowing water through vibrations made in soil.  This helps them grow their roots in the right direction.  Another recent plant study suggested that plants know when you're eating them.  Shrubs release special chemicals in response to damage that sends signals "like a pain response", scientists found.  We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368 . We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours.


thesun--2019-11-05--This is why you keep killing your plants – they’re scared of water

PLANTS go into a state of all-consuming 'panic' when it rains, according to surprised scientists.  This response is so unusual because plants obviously need water to live.  The researchers think that the 'panic' response is due to the fact moisture creates the number one way for diseases to spread in vegetation.  Biochemist Harvey Millar from The University of Western Australia explained: "When a raindrop splashes across a leaf, tiny droplets of water ricochet in all directions.  "These droplets can contain bacteria, viruses, or fungal spores.  "A single droplet can spread these up to 10 metres to surrounding plants."  The longer a leaf is wet, the greater the chance that a disease can take hold.  So this is why the researchers think plants react to rain like humans would react to someone sneezing on them.  They conducted an experiment in which they mimicked rain with a spray bottle and noticed rapid microscopic reactions from the plants that are invisible to the human eye.  After the first 10 minutes of fake raining, over 700 genes in the plants were said to respond in a panic-like manner and most of them continued to do so for around 15 minutes.  In this time chemical reactions like how the plant creates proteins and its hormone balance were affected.  A single touch of water activated an immediate response from plants.  The reactions created warning signals that travelled from leaf to leaf and resulted in the plant undertaking a range of protective measures.  Plants that were repeatedly watered eventually suffered from stunted growth and delayed flowering.  Interestingly, the plants were also found to be communicating their 'fears' with nearby vegetation.  They did this by secreting airborne chemicals that can be picked up by other plants and inform them what's going on and how they're coping.  Millar said: "If a plant's neighbours have their defence mechanisms turned on, they are less likely to spread disease so it's in their best interest for plants to spread the warning to nearby plants."  This study has been published in the journal PNAS.  In other news, the smell of your freshly cut lawn is grass ‘screaming’ to warn other plants they’re under attack.  A terrifying plant that kills sheep and ‘feasts’ on their rotting flesh is growing in Cornwall.  And, the real ‘Garden of Eden’ where all humans originated 200,000 years ago has finally been found in Botswana.  Are you surprised by this plant revelation? Let us know in the comments...  We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online Tech & Science team? Email us at tech@the-sun.co.uk


thetelegraph--2019-01-15--Plants grown on Moon for first time paving way for lunar base

Plants have sprouted on the Moon for the first time in a mini biosphere paving the way for bases which produce their own food and air.  Pictures of the first tiny green shoots of cotton were released by researchers at the Advanced Technology Research Institute at Chongqing University who are running the experiment on board the Chang'e-4 lunar lander.  The Chinese space agency spacecraft became the first to make a soft landing on the far side of the Moon earlier this month.  Plants and flowers have been grown on board the International Space Station (ISS), and Chinese 'taikonauts' grew rice in China's Tiangong-2 space lab.


thetelegraph--2019-01-31--Fill your garden with Mediterranean plants to beat future droughts new RHS guidance says

Fill your garden with Mediterranean plants to beat future droughts, new RHS guidance says

Gardeners across the country looked despondently at their brown, parched flowerbeds during the heatwave last year. Now, the Royal Horticultural Society is advising British people plant brightly coloured Mediterranean trees and flowers to drought-proof their gardens.  The charity has released a list of ten attractive, colourful  plants which can be put in the ground from April and can survive extremely dry conditions.  Included in the list are the bright magenta rock rose, aromatic rosemary and lavender, silvery Russian sage and the bright yellow Spanish broom.  This advice comes from the charity's recently-recruited environmental horticulture team, which is coming up with new ways to protect British gardens from the effects of climate change and extreme weather.  Mark Gush, Head of Environmental Horticulture at the RHS, said: "It may seem counter-intuitive that while much of the UK is under snow and ice gardeners should be considering Mediterranean plants for their gardens this summer.  However, with the UK expected to experience warmer, drier summers over the coming years, hardy exotic varieties that can cope with periods of drought will enable gardeners to better manage water resources in their gardens.  "RHS Garden Hyde Hall in Essex is situated in one of the driest parts of the country but its Dry Garden survived - even thrived - last summer, and has lasted an astonishing 18 years without being watered, instead capturing only the occasional rains that fall.  "Of course, early establishment is imperative so plants have good root structures deep in the soil meaning it’s important gardeners plan ahead."  The new team will research and advise on sustainable resource management, soil health and ecosystem services, including how the UK’s 27 million gardeners can contend with weather extremes, air and noise pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Findings and advice will be shared with industry and the public.


upi--2019-11-12--Plants are ineffective at maintaining indoor air quality

Don't count on potted plants to keep your home's air clean.  Dispelling a common belief, researchers at Drexel University in Philadelphia found that natural ventilation does a far better job than houseplants in maintaining air quality in homes and offices.  "This has been a common misconception for some time. Plants are great, but they don't actually clean indoor air quickly enough to have an effect on the air quality of your home or office environment," said Michael Waring, head of Drexel's indoor environment research group.  His team analyzed dozens of studies conducted over 30 years. Their findings were published online Nov. 6 in the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology.  The researchers said air-exchange rates indoors -- either natural or from ventilation -- dilute concentrations of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) far faster than plants can pull them from the air. VOCs are the air pollutants that plants are supposed to clean.  Many of the studies reviewed did find that plants reduced concentrations of VOCs over time. This likely led to the widespread belief that plants can purify indoor air, the study authors said.  But it would take between 10 and 1,000 plants per square meter of floor space to match the air cleaning capacity of a building's air-handling system or even just a couple of open windows in a house, the investigators found.  "This is certainly an example of how scientific findings can be misleading or misinterpreted over time," Waring said in a university news release.  "But it's also a great example of how scientific research should continually reexamine and question findings to get closer to the ground truth of understanding what's actually happening around us," he added.  The American Lung Association has more on indoor air quality.


wakingtimes--2019-12-07--Plants Emit Ultrasonic Squeals When Stressed, Recordings Reveal

New research shows that plants can actually talk.  But don’t expect them to help you with your homework or sing along with the radio. A new study shows that plants are creating frequencies in responses to their surroundings, or in other words, they are reacting.  These “reactions” in plants, that we could see as analogical to human senses, is actually nothing new. We have learned over the past few years that plants are capable of seeing, hearing, and smelling. And with this newest finding we are just one sense away from completing the five human senses in some species of the plantae kingdom.  For the first time, plants have been recorded making airborne sounds when stressed, which researchers say could open up a new field of precision agriculture where farmers listen for water starved crops.  This study was done by Itzhak Khait and his colleagues at Tel Aviv University in Israel. The researchers found that tomato and tobacco plants made sounds at frequencies humans cannot hear when facing situations such as lack of water or when being cut.  On average, drought-stressed tomato plants made 35 sounds per hour, while tobacco plants made 11 and unstressed plants produced fewer than one sound per hour, on average.  The researchers trained a machine-learning model to discriminate between the plant’s sounds and the wind, rain, and other ambient noises of the greenhouse, in order to correctly identify the source of stress.  Sound exists in both low and high frequencies. Humans cannot hear the entire spectrum of frequencies around us. If we could, we would likely become distracted and anxious by always hearing the frequencies around us including radio frequencies from cell towers near us or even cooking a frozen meal in the microwave. Thankfully, the range of human hearing is typically considered to be only 20 Hz to 20 kHz.  With the above in mind, we can now understand why humans are not sensitive to the sounds that plants are emitting.  A possible mechanism by which they generate the sounds is cavitation (the process whereby air bubbles form and explode in the xylem):  “Cavitation explosions have been shown to produce vibrations similar to the ones we recorded… but it has never been tested whether these sounds are transmitted through air at intensities that can be sensed by other organisms. Regardless of the specific mechanism generating them, the sounds we record carry information, and can be heard by many organisms. If these sounds serve for communication a plant could benefit from, natural selection could have favoured traits that would increase their transmission.”  Further research must be conducted to find the potential applications this discovery may have, but these are big steps to understanding the reality of the plants that surround us.


breitbart--2019-09-18--Union Theological Seminary Holds Confession to Plants in Chapel Ceremony

Union Theological Seminary Holds ‘Confession to Plants’ in Chapel Ceremony

“Today in chapel, we confessed to plants,” UTS tweeted, together with a picture of the ritual. “Together, we held our grief, joy, regret, hope, guilt and sorrow in prayer; offering them to the beings who sustain us but whose gift we too often fail to honor.”  “What do you confess to the plants in your life?” it asked:  On Wednesday, after receiving a fair amount of derisive feedback, the seminary sent out a flurry of tweets defending its actions.  “When Robin Wall Kimmerer spoke at Union last year, she concluded her lecture by tasking us—and all faith communities—to develop new liturgies by which to mourn, grieve, heal and change in response to our climate emergency,” one UTS tweet said. “We couldn’t be prouder to participate in this work.”  “So, if you’re poking fun, we’d ask only that you also spend a couple moments asking: Do I treat plants and animals as divinely created beings?” another tweet proposed in its ecological examination of conscience. “What harm do I cause without thinking? How can I enter into new relationship with the natural world?”  Tuesday’s ritual seemed in consonance with the seminary’s approach to the Christian faith.  “Progressive theology has long taken shape at Union, where faith and scholarship walk together to be a moral force in the world,” declares the seminary website in its mission statement. “Grounded in the Christian tradition and responsive to the needs of God’s creation, a Union education prepares its students for committed lives of service to the church, academy, and society.”  The education offered makes connections between Christian traditions and the insights of other faiths and “the most profoundly challenging issues of our contemporary experience: the realities of suffering and injustice, world religious pluralism, the fragility of our planet, and discoveries of modern science.”


naturalnews--2019-09-06--Just like humans plants also have an immune system and we might be poisoning it

Just like humans, plants also have an immune system – and we might be poisoning it

(Natural News) Plants do more than just beautify gardens and lawns. Fruit-bearing plants, herbs, and vegetables provide the nutrients that you need to stay healthy, while all plants provide oxygen. But according to a study, plant breeding and pesticide use negatively affects the immune system of plants.  The study, which was published in the journal Science, involved a collaboration between researchers from the University of Basel, the VIB-UGent Center for Plant Systems Biology, and the VIB-UGent Center for Medical Biotechnology.  During the course of the study, the researchers found that metacaspases (a class of proteolytic enzymes) are crucial for the activation of immune response in plants. They warned that common plant breeding strategies and the use of pesticides may be impeding this natural response.  When multicellular organisms, like humans, are hurt, their damaged cells transmit signals to alert the surrounding tissue of the wound. These signals can then trigger the immune system to respond to the injury and promote tissue regeneration. These signals also result in wound healing.  The same thing happens to plants, albeit with certain differences.  Peptides (short protein fragments) in plants are essential for the proper functioning of their immune system. These peptides are produced from precursor proteins that have been “cut into shape” by proteases (proteolytic enzymes).  But since there are a lot of proteases, it is necessary to identify those with roles in the plant immune system.  For their study, the researchers wounded thale cress (Arabidopsis thaliana) leaves and found that metacaspases play a crucial role in the plant’s response. The response also involves the release of calcium and PROPEP1, a peptide precursor protein.  Support our mission to keep you informed: Discover the extraordinary benefits of turmeric gummy bears and organic "turmeric gold" liquid extract, both laboratory tested for heavy metals, microbiology and safety. Naturally high in potent curcuminoids. Delicious formulations. All purchases support this website (as well as your good health). See availability here.  The scientists verified their initial findings by producing a plant with a mutation in the gene coding for a crucial metacaspase. They noted that the plant was incapable of releasing the immune signal following injury.  Simon Stael, one of the authors of the study, explained that damage elevates calcium levels in the plant cell interior. High calcium levels activate metacaspases, which then work on PROPEP1, the protein that regulates the immune response and other related efforts to limit further damage.  Standard plant breeding practices and the use of pesticides could negatively affect the immune system of plants. An impaired immune system could result in slower recovery from damage.  Plant breeding refers to a technique that combines plant seeds to produce nutrient-rich, high-quality fruits and vegetables that will grow well in ideal planting conditions. However, since farmers aren’t familiar with metacaspases, they could unknowingly be limiting plant resilience due to damage caused to their immune system by plant breeding. (Related: Health Basics: Understanding GMO engineering and why altering plant DNA in laboratories becomes so DANGEROUS to human health.)  The research team remains hopeful that their findings can be used in future studies. Proteases often cleave more than one protein. New research can look into different plant processes that require metacaspases and are linked to wound response and immunity.  If you have a home garden, refrain from using pesticides to maintain optimum plant health. Use the following alternatives in place of harmful pesticides.  Try using natural alternatives to keep your plants healthy and avoid using pesticides that contain harmful chemicals.


theguardianuk--2019-01-27--Why Ive turned my house into a home for rescued plants Eva Wiseman

Why I’ve turned my house into a home for rescued plants | Eva Wiseman

There’s a greenhouse at the back of my local garden centre where they keep the big houseplants and each one is carefully labelled: “Plant”. I buy one at a time to avoid ongoing domestic dispute and they collect greenly in my house under varying levels of care. Varying levels of care, but infinite love, love I learned from my parents’ relationship with a plant that lives at the top of their stairs which they call the “moon flower”. I’ve identified it online as a night-blooming cereus – further, an _[Epiphyllum oxypetalum](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/dec/05/flatworms- epiphyllum-oxypetalum)_ , and my sister and I receive texts alerting us to news of an opening bud. My parents will have woken to a smell, sickly but good, like someone’s caramelising a memory, and they will tell us to be round at dusk. Because then we can stand on the stairs and watch it open, actually watch the petals creak open, until it is there basking in the moonlight, that smell now quite raw and conquering. By morning the flower will have died, and hang from a leaf like a washed up squid.  When I moved house, my dad gave me a cutting, which now stands dwarfed by a giant version I found in the garden centre bin. But much as I love the garden centre with its jolly disregard for potted things, my preferred way to acquire new plants is via adoption. It’s a similar feeling I get on my weekly tour of the local charity shops – the cancer one is good for books, the hospice one is better for furniture, and the one raising funds for sick children is excellent for pottery.  All are bursting in the wake of _[Kondo](https://www.theguardian.com/global/2018/dec/30/dont-mess-with-marie- tidying-up-with-author-netflix-star-marie-kondo)_ , our neighbourhood having watched the entire series in a single weekend, talked about it endlessly at supermarket checkouts, on phones to daughters, in newspaper columns, etc, found joy lacking in 99% of their possessions, shovelled them into a binbag and dumped it on the pavement outside Barnardos at midnight. Which is great for me, a person that read Marie Kondo’s [book in 2015](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jun/14/decluttering-a-load-of- junk-the-life-changing-magic-of-tidying) and concluded that, actually, I love stuff, that stuff is brilliant, often reminding me who I am; and that clutter is just matter out of place.  So I buy a lot of homemade pots, a lot of vase-like structures made during a difficult period in someone’s life, glazed and signed hopefully, that have sat on a shelf filled with pencils and old screws until one day their owner realises their life has improved, or at least moved beyond the short-lived pottery class crisis of 1991, and that their misshaped vessels are holding mainly resentment. The pots, often brown, with occasional patterns made with thumbs, call to me from among the Sports Direct mugs, and part of me buys them because I’m fond of things handmade, but a more complicated part buys them because I pity them.  One particular vase springs to mind, in the shop for awful mental health, which the shop assistant was openly laughing at. He was holding it, and he was laughing at it, and he was saying: “Dunno man, what even is it?” It was a vase, well. A vase in the shape of a very robust toilet roll, painted green with brown details, and extremely heavy. I offered £2 for it, he talked me down to 50p.  When my boyfriend works nights I go to bed early and scroll gleefully through local websites searching for unwanted plants that I can resurrect. “Healthy and big” ads will typically start, or “Can anyone care for my baby?” As with the pots, I like to feel that I’m rescuing them. We once drove to an estate in Stanmore where a woman showed us the cactus she’d bought from Ikea when it first opened. Having arrived the size of a lightbulb, today it stood, slightly bowed in the corner of a smoky living room, 6ft something in a plastic pot. She called her lodger out of bed with his girlfriend to try and help us move it, but even as he helped shuffle it across the carpet we knew it wouldn’t fit in the car.  The next day, her neighbours brought it round, having laid a hundred blankets over their laps and squeezed it into the boot. Now sharp new growths make its silhouette slightly fuzzy against the window, and it stands delighted and massive, bringing me daily joy. It joined a large and as yet unidentified plant with fingerlike leaves whose previous owner, a stranger from Gumtree, needed to get rid of it because it “scared her boyfriend”.  I love them all, my large prickly sons, perhaps too much – they need far less water than I want to give them. I fuss. I move them too much. I repot with abandon. Delighting in a new shoot on a small plant this morning, I pulled it off. Often I must smother the thought that actually all these plants (a room full, with more scattered wildly around the house, reaching, reaching for the light) would live better lives without my clumsy interventions. That they would thrive untouched by my cold meat hands. That I’m not rescuing them, but instead, they’re rescuing me.  ## And another thing…  I’ve just read Pulitzer prize-winning feminist Susan Faludi’s _**In the Darkroom**_ , a book about reconnecting with her macho father after they transitioned to female. One extraordinary element is Stefanie’s past as an airbrusher of fashion photographs. When they meet she’s using her skills to transform her own image through similar means.  This morning I tried a **£15 coffee** from a farmer in Yemen, via Le Café Alain Ducasse. It was delicate, almost tea-like, and they served it with tiny doll-sized slabs of dark chocolate, and a side shot of something like ice tea. I still feel quite high.  The ****_Observer Magazine’s_ own agony aunt, the wise and brilliant **Mariella Frostrup,** has published a collection of the greatest escapades ever experienced by women, including Junko Tabei, the first woman to climb Everest, and Nellie Bly, who circumnavigated the globe in under 80 days. _Wild Women_ is out now.  _Email Eva at[e.wiseman@observer.co.uk](mailto:e.wiseman@observer.co.uk) or follow her on Twitter[@EvaWiseman](http:)_


theguardianuk--2019-02-17--The joy of growing extinct plants

The joy of growing extinct plants

There is something fascinatingly weird about us gardeners. For as much as horticulture is all about the therapeutic art of nurturing and caring for plants, it is also often just as much about the feverish need to amass collections of them.  From the 19th-century oligarchs who would send teams of plant hunters to scour the earth for the undiscovered to 21st-century urban flat dwellers like me who will spend hours (and far too much money) on internet auction sites and rare plant markets to track down elusive varieties, this pursuit of rarity seems for many an intrinsic part of what it is to be a gardener. All too often, however, this desire can put pressure on wild populations, as plants are over-collected to fuel this insatiable demand.  There is a solution. If you have this hunger for growing the weird and wonderful, look to plants that are so rare they are actually extinct in the wild.  For those with only a windowsill, things don’t get much better than the Hawaiian palm Brighamia insignis. Its stout, fleshy, silvery sheened trunk is topped with a lush crown of lobed, apple-green leaves, making it look like something out of a sci-fi film. In early summer, mature plants throw out a spray of elegant white, star-shaped flowers with funnel-like throats. Sadly it is this elegance that was part of their undoing. With such long throats to their flowers, they could only be pollinated by a moth that evolved alongside them. When that became extinct, it doomed the plants to relying on humans to propagate them. Fortunately hand-pollinated plants are now sold widely in the houseplant trade, with a percentage of funds going to conserve its native habitat.  For those with a sunny conservatory, angel’s trumpet, or brugmansia, is a dramatic shrub from the high Andes, sending out dozens of sweetly scented hanging trumpets in a range of pastels. All seven species in this genus are thought to be functionally extinct in the wild, as although they are capable of setting viable fruit, the seeds within remain trapped inside a tough husk and undispersed. It is thought this vital ecological service was once carried out by giant sloths, hunted to extinction millennia ago. Fortunately, indigenous people prize these species for religious and ritual use, which has helped keep them going.  Finally, for those with garden space, my pick is a ginkgo. Despite being one of the world’s most ancient plants, predating dinosaurs, they are believed to be totally extinct in the wild. The last remaining forest stand of them in their native east Asia, was recently found to not be wild at all, but an ancient plantation tended to by monks. With beautiful fish-tail leaves that turn butter yellow in the autumn, wonderful architectural structure and potential medicinal value (the leaves are used to make a tea believed to enhance memory), you can’t ask for much more. If you don’t have much space, ginkgos make good candidates for pots, which dramatically restrict their growth rate.  Horticulture is the only thing keeping many of these species alive, so by choosing to grow these plants you are playing a direct part in their conservation. It is how to get some of the rarest plants on earth in your collection, in a sustainable way.  Email James at james.wong@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter@Botanygeek