Stories tagged trees
At 9,500 years old, it took root just after the last Ice Age. It can tell us a lot about the climate at the time, and how the Earth has changed over thousands of years. (The previous oldest-known trees are North American bristle pines – at 5,000 years old, mere saplings to the Swedish spruce.)
Tags : Science & Slime: Watch a cool video of how researchers find the latest and greatest slime
Here's a cool video from National Geographic about scientists who go out looking for natural occuring slimes and the innovative things that they do with them.
My neighbor's tree dies a slow, agonizing, horrible death: Well, the leaves do, anyway. Photo by Gene
Oh, sure. Autumn looks pretty, with its big flashy colors and brilliant blue skies. But that’s just a mask it wears to disguise its true, evil intentions. Everything good in the world is dying, all around us, and there’s nothing we can do about it. In fall the nights grow longer, the days colder. Beaches close. Bicycles get packed away for the season. The two most perfect inventions of the mind of man – daylight saving time and baseball – both come to a close. It is the end of life as we have known it. And all we have to look forward to are endless months of icicle winds, lowering skies, and – worst of all – football.
The fiery colors of Autumn are the flames of a funeral pyre, a sign of death and decay. According to Susan Carpenter, native plant gardener at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum, leaves depend on the chemical auxin to keep open the tubes that supply water, sugar and nutrients. But the cooler temperatures and shorter days of Autumn shut off auxin production. The tubes are cut off, and the leaf strangles and dies. Chlorophyll, the green chemical that gives leaves their summer color, disintegrates, leaving behind two other chemicals: yellow carotene and red anthocyanin. Different tree species contain these chemicals in different amounts, resulting in the various colors we see.
Trees are at their most colorful when a cool, wet summer is followed by a sunny, dry fall. Rainfall promotes tree growth, and moderate temperatures prevent scorching in the summer sun. Extra sunlight in the fall allows trees to continue producing their chemicals right up to the end.
Here in Michigan, we had pretty much the opposite – a summer of drought and searing temperatures, followed by a fairly wet fall. The trees have been pretty brown since mid-September, though a few of them are making a late run at color. Don’t bother, boys. We’re depressed enough as it is.
Old Fruit: Researchers in the Middle East have discovered that people 11,400 years ago were planting fig trees, the earliest known planted crops.It’s that time of early summer to dig out the packets of seeds, dig in the dirt a little bit and get that garden ready.
And this week researchers have found new evidence for what may be the oldest cultivated crop known to be grown by man.
Digging in ruins near Jericho on the West Bank, researchers have found the remains of figs that they believe are the first intentionally planted crops by man. According to dating sciences applied by the researchers, the figs were grown about 11,400 years ago. That’s about 1,000 years earlier than the previously believed-to-be earliest crops of wheat, barley and chickpeas.
What the researchers found were nine small figs in the ruins of a building. They were charred, which preserved them in a condition that allowed them to be analyzed using dating methods. The date of the fire was able to be determined by carbon-dating the remains of the fire.
It’s a bit of a twisting road to figuring out how people of that era could plant the figs. The figs themselves were sterile, not allowing for them to produce seeds that could grow new fig trees. That led researchers to figure out that people were planting stems of tree shoots into the ground to create new fig trees. This process would make fig trees to become domesticated before other fruit-bearer such as grapes, olives or other fruit plants.
The findings of the researchers were published this week in the journal Science.
There was no evidence that earlier man used the newly farmed figs to make fig newton cookies.
Scientists at the Max Plank Institute in Germany have discovered that living trees are a major source of methane in the Earth's atmosphere. Methane is a major "greenhouse gas," implicated in global warming.
Trees and sun: Trees and sun
Before this study, scientists thought plants only released small amounts of methane, and then only when they decomposed (as in swamps). The new research shows that plants release methane throughout their lives, and in large amounts—up to 30% or more of the planet's total methane production may come from plants.
This forces us to re-think environmental efforts. Strategies for dealing with climate change, such as the Kyoto Protocols, often call for planting more trees. And it's true that trees do take a lot of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere—the most prevalent greenhouse gas. But now it turns out trees also release methane, so their benefit is not quite as great as once thought.
Under a spreading chestnut-tree
The village smithy stands;
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Chestnut
Courtesy Jaydot
At the end of April, President Bush marked Arbor Day by planting an American chestnut tree on the White House lawn. What makes this small piece of political theater significant is that the chestnut—a beautiful native tree which featured prominently in art and literature—was virtually wiped out by disease.
In 1900, chestnut trees spread from Maine to Mississippi. By 1950, some 99% of them had died of chestnut blight, a fungus introduced from China. A few isolated populations hung on, primarily in remote regions of the Appalachian Mountains.
In recent years, scientists have worked hard to breed a disease-resistant strain. They've taken surviving chestnuts and crossed them with Chinese chestnuts, which have a natural resistance to the disease. The result is a new American chestnut that can withstand the blight.
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