As a boy he grew plants up his bedroom wall. Patrick Blanc's most recent vertical garden is eight stories tall.
posted by alms on Sep 6, 2009 - 27 comments

The Living Root Bridges of Cherrapunji, India. [Via]
posted by homunculus on Aug 8, 2009 - 32 comments

New botanical research is shedding light on plant behavior and "intelligence". [more inside]
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing on Jun 11, 2009 - 37 comments

Have you ever wondered what New York was like before it was a city? Find out at The Mannahatta Project, by navigating through the map to discover Manhattan Island and its native wildlife in 1609. [more inside]
posted by netbros on Jun 4, 2009 - 16 comments

The Graduate University for Advanced Studies, casually referred to as Sōkendai (a contraction of Sōgō kenkyū daigakuin daigaku), was founded in 1988 as the 96th national university in Japan. Amongst other things, it is home to the Soken Taxa Web Server which in turn hosts the first online Japanese Ant Color Image Database that currently lists 273 species of ant, the Illustrated Guide of Marine Mammals and the Marine Mammals Stranding DataBase, the Mammalian Crania Photographic Archive that currently includes 704 specimens, the Morning Glories Database that covers the many mutants of Ipomoea nil, closely related species and interspecific hybrids, the Makino Herbarium Database, which is named after the pioneering Japanese botanist, Tomitaro Makino, and the Japanese Bees Image Database.
posted by filthy light thief on Apr 20, 2009 - 5 comments

"All of the nomenclatural, bibliographic, and specimen data accumulated in MBG’s electronic databases during the past 25 years are publicly available here. This system has over one million scientific names and 3.5 million specimen records." (Description from website.) Searchable by scientific or common name, the database includes brief descriptions, images and references (with some links to full text in Botanicus), and specimen and distribution lists that are available in Google Maps and Earth. Quite a nice resource for anyone interested in botany. [more inside]
posted by cog_nate on Mar 20, 2009 - 3 comments

Whether you're a casual cultivator or gardening guru, PlantCare.com has a wealth of information about the care and feeding of indoor and outdoor plants. You can search the extensive plant database to find information on thousands of house plants, participate in and discuss your favorite gardening topics in the plant forum, and expand your plant knowledge with hundreds of gardening tips and guides.
posted by netbros on Feb 25, 2009 - 10 comments

Where did all the acorns go? With reports of acornless oaks coming in from all over the U.S., what is a squirrel to do? [more inside]
posted by afu on Dec 1, 2008 - 62 comments

The hills of other earths might not be green...The Color(s) Out of Space. [more inside]
posted by Kronos_to_Earth on Apr 21, 2008 - 23 comments

Don Berto’s Garden. "The plants of the ancient Maya whisper their secrets to those who speak a shared language."
posted by homunculus on Oct 28, 2007 - 7 comments

The glass flowers of Leopold Blaschka were created to provide enduring botanical teaching models. During his lifetime 4,000 models were created; a selection of 17 specimens are currently on display at the Corning Museum of Glass. MeFi has previously been treated to the splendor of the Blaschka marine invertebrates.
posted by donovan on Jun 25, 2007 - 12 comments

The UC Davis corpse flower bloomed yesterday: "Amorphophallus titanum, also known as Titan Arum or the Corpse Flower because of its smell, takes up to 15 years to bloom and rarely does so in cultivation...The stink is astounding." (Another stinky flower previously discussed here.)
posted by footnote on May 8, 2007 - 43 comments

The Mathematical Lives of Plants "Scientists have puzzled over this pattern of plant growth for hundreds of years. Why would plants prefer the golden angle to any other? And how can plants possibly "know" anything about Fibonacci numbers?"
posted by dhruva on May 7, 2007 - 31 comments

In the 1920s Joseph Rock, an Austrian-born botanist went to live in Lijiang, in Yunnan province. During expeditions over the next three decades he photographed shamans, trulku, petty kings, nomads, astounding scenery and flora and fauna across much of southwest China. He also studied the language and culture of the Nakhi people previouslywhose homeleand centred around Lijiang. A contemporary blogger is now posting some then-and-now images of the places and people Rock recorded.
posted by Abiezer on Feb 23, 2007 - 18 comments

Chile Pepper's Lonely Endorphins Club Cinema: I, II, III

Can all this be explained by Dr. Paul Rozin's Benign Masochism / Constrained Risk theory? I, for one, am not buying it, but any way you slice it, hot cock sauce is here to stay.
posted by NaturalScinema on Feb 23, 2007 - 35 comments

Grow your own. Furniture that is. Christopher Cattle has pictures and basic instructions on growing a three legged stool. Similiar previously here, here, and here.
posted by Mitheral on Dec 10, 2006 - 12 comments

NewCROP index part of the Center for New Crops & Plant Products, at Purdue University is an amazing collection of commercial plant information. From Macadamia nuts and qinghao to Tumbleweed and Sweetgrass a broad range of plants are detailed. The information that is included for each ranges from a single paragraph for Quackgrass to dozens of internal and external links for Soybeans. Crops are listed both alphabetically by genus and common name. Warning: Web .95 navigation
posted by Mitheral on Sep 15, 2006 - 5 comments

Alexander von Humboldt was a German naturalist, botanist and explorer. His discoveries were many, and as such various animals and geographic features are named after him (even on the moon and elsewhere). His writings inspired many, and many foundations and scholarships exist with his name. One of those he inspired, with great tales of the American frontier (PDF) and Humboldt's oft-used word "Lebensraum", was Adolf Hitler (no link needed). That may have been an influencing factor for the creation of the outdoors-oriented Hitler Youth, and even pushed Adolf into expanding to the vast unpopulated expanses of Russia, via Poland, of course.
posted by Kickstart70 on May 26, 2006 - 8 comments

The architecture of plant tissue. Very cool stained slides of various plant cells. [via Pruned]
posted by billysumday on Apr 14, 2006 - 4 comments

The Memory of The Netherlands is an extensive digital collection of illustrations, photographs, texts, film and audio fragments from a large variety of Dutch cultural institutions. There are about 50 collections (in english).
posted by peacay on Feb 19, 2006 - 7 comments

Beware, O unsuspecting traveler; for the path you take shall surely lead to your doom. The Galleria Carnivora: A celebration of plants that kill. Also, learn how to cultivate your own Audreys with the help of the International Carnivorous Plant Society (and check out their Members Gallery as well).
posted by Gator on Feb 9, 2006 - 14 comments

"Lost World" found in Indonesian Papua (with audio)
posted by Protocols of the Elders of Awesome on Feb 7, 2006 - 21 comments

A xylothek is literally a library of wood, a collection of book-like boxes made from trees--the wood and bark with the seeds, leaves, flowers, fruit--or illustrations of the soft parts (site in German), inside.
posted by dhruva on Nov 9, 2005 - 29 comments

Missouri Botanical Gardens Rare Books: The Illustrated Garden
This collection contains seventy seven 18th and 19th century botanical books and these are just a small sample of the 3000+ beautiful illustrations contained within. (via)
posted by peacay on Aug 23, 2005 - 18 comments

Wayne's World (an unfortunate name for a great website) is "An On-line Textbook of Natural History." I went looking for information on Vanilla, which I knew is the only commercial food product of an orchid, but which I didn't know is hand-pollinated, and found information on so much more. There are several extensive courses available on basic biology and botany, a huge section on chemicals in plants and animals, and tons of fun stuff like "The Truth about Cauliflory" and "Bat-Pollinated Flowers Of The Calabash & Sausage Tree." The index is extensive and covers everything from "Absinthe: An Herb That May Have Poisoned Vincent van Gogh" to "Ziricote: Beautiful Caribbean Hardwood In The Borage Family."
posted by OmieWise on Aug 4, 2005 - 10 comments

News from the world of plants by way of the University of British Columbia Botanical Garden weblog. Beauty in science by way of the photo of the day.
posted by plep on Jun 2, 2005 - 5 comments

Follow the blooming of the Corpseflower. The Titan opened about halfway during the course of the morning and afternoon yesterday, giving off stronger waves of odor as the day progressed. The peak odor and opening was in the early evening and by 10PM the pulses of odor became less strong. The daily progress of the Amorphophallus Titanum.
posted by jokeefe on Jul 7, 2004 - 7 comments

Monsanto Wins Fight to Control Plant The Canadian Supreme court sets international precedent by ruling that since Monsanto holds a patent on a gene, it can control the use of the plant. So does this mean that in the future that an engineered human gene could be patented, and therefore if you receive this gene you will have to make royalty payments? And if you renege on paying can they repo the gene?
posted by batboy on May 21, 2004 - 34 comments

Smithsonian Catalog of Botanical Illustrations Feel the need for a touch of spring? The Smithsonian offers five hundred images (created by eleven artists) from its vast collection of botanical illustrations. Check out the images in the Curtis Botanical Magazine (1787-1807). For more wide-ranging overviews, try the Scientific Illustrators (1600-present); the Missouri Botanical Garden Library (digitized copies of 46 rare books); this special exhibition at the University of Delaware (general survey); and Haley & Steele (women artists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries). Julene Sodt provides an extensive bibliography.
posted by thomas j wise on Mar 8, 2004 - 2 comments

Emergent computation: Plants seem to do it! Does that mean we do three? [more here :]
posted by kliuless on Jan 21, 2004 - 7 comments

The Missouri Botanical Garden Library has scanned and posted 46 volumes of its rare book collection. 16,133 pages and 2,050 beautiful illustrations are currently available.
As an example, see this engraving of a foxglove by Pierre Vallet from 1608.
posted by thatwhichfalls on Dec 22, 2003 - 7 comments

Lichens of North America 'This website grew out of the activities of Sylvia and Stephen Sharnoff, who did the photographic fieldwork for the book Lichens of North America, by Irwin M.Brodo and the Sharnoffs, published in November, 2001 by Yale University Press ... ' - the human uses of lichens, a lichen sampler, lichen portraits ('This lichen is used medicinally in India as a poultice to induce copious urination, as a linament and an incense for headaches, and also as a powder to help wounds heal.') ... more lichen links.
Related interest :- The Hidden Forest, photos of lichens, fungi, mosses and slime moulds of the New Zealand bush.
posted by plep on Nov 20, 2003 - 21 comments

Plants in motion is a comprehensive archive of time-lapse movies (Quicktime format) of plants germinating and growing, flowers opening, tropic responses and circadian movements. Some of the video is quite eerie. The plants really seem...erm...alive... The site also has a guide to making your own time-lapse film.
posted by Jimbob on Oct 19, 2003 - 14 comments

Botanical Record-Breakers - learn about the world's most poisonous plants, the fastest growing, the most painful, the oldest, the ongoing debate about the largest, and much more. Also discussed is the rare coconut pearl - botanical jewel, or hoax?
posted by Jimbob on Oct 2, 2003 - 8 comments

'Superweeds' signal setback for genetically modified crops.
posted by thedailygrowl on Jun 25, 2003 - 22 comments

Katinka Matson's scanned flower art : technology lets the flowers speak. "...imagine a painter who could, like Vermeer, capture the quality of light that a camera can, but with the color of paints. That is what a scanner gives you.... In her flowers one can see every microscopic dew drop, leaf vein, and particle of pollen—in satisfying rich pigmented color....." (scroll down for images)
posted by troutfishing on Jun 24, 2003 - 16 comments

Paghat The Ratgirl (google cache) is one of the more interesting people that I have encountered on the Internet. A frequent poster to the newsgroup rec.gardens, her gardening site is an interesting mix of plant history and folklore, lovely images and a darn good place to get ideas on what to add to the yard next. She frequently posts to many other newsgroups as well and a quick google search or two turns up thousands of messages by paghat, her detractors and her fans. She even has a gift shop.
posted by bargle on Jun 12, 2003 - 7 comments

The delicate art of topiary, or "cutting trees into weird shapes". The people. The history. The outstanding. The bizarre, and the phallic (completely SFW). I grew up with a similar tree to the last one on my street, although ours had...uhugm... a knob on top; I believe the gardener responsible was too short to trim above a certain level...
posted by Jimbob on Jun 5, 2003 - 10 comments

Antique Botanical Prints from Panteek, and many more.
posted by hama7 on May 23, 2003 - 3 comments

The Dancing Plant -- Darwin was obsessed by it, although even he never trained his weedy Asian shrub to twitch its leaves to the sound of music. But in a small town in northern Thailand ... [Some people may experience a time-delay ad]
posted by titboy on Mar 12, 2003 - 13 comments

The Eden Project celebrates its first birthday today. Happy birthday.
posted by homunculus on Mar 18, 2002 - 3 comments

"Feeeeed Me!" Although the physical reality of this "museum" seems a bit sketchy, you simply have to love lush color photos of carniverous plants. I mean c'mon! Audrey II would be proud.
posted by jeremias on Mar 4, 2002 - 2 comments

The geranium: Nature's camera. The sensitivity of certain silver salts to light was known from about 1727, when Johann Heinrich Schulze published his findings in the Nuremburg Academy of Natural Philosophers. But many natural things are sensitive to light. Long ago people noticed the effect of light on green plants, or how it made coloured fabrics fade. It is the effect of light on plants that makes Roman Photography possible. [via bifurcated rivets]
posted by skallas on Jan 20, 2002 - 12 comments

Say it with Amorphophallus titanum!

Looking for that special way to tell your loved one how much you care? Express your true feelings with the unforgettable aroma of a "rotting elephant corpse".
posted by groundhog on Oct 10, 2001 - 7 comments

What's 95 inches tall, purple, and stinks like rotten meat? Why, it's Amorphophallus titanum, the world's largest flower. One of them is about to bloom at the University of Wisconsin - Madison Department of Botany, and the link will take you to a webcam waiting for it to bloom. One bloomed at Kew Gardens in the UK a couple of years ago to much fanfare, and there are only a dozen or so "in captivity".
posted by briank on Jun 5, 2001 - 17 comments

NASA to send glow-in-the-dark plants to Mars. While they wait and search for native life form, NASA, in conjunction with Ferl Lab of University of Florida, is sending GM plants that would report back via their glow into the Red Planet. The good doctor has sent his babies into the heavens before.
posted by tamim on May 7, 2001 - 4 comments