From Sheffield, England to Yongbyon, North Korea, nuclear plant cooling towers are coming down! And pretty much without a hitch. Things didn't go quite so well, though, for an old flour factory in Turkey, which just rolled over onto its roof. D'oh!
posted by flapjax at midnite on Aug 1, 2009 - 34 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

Summer's coming! The tried-and-true food growing tool of the aspiring urban agriculturalist: self-irrigating planters. Make or buy one of these things and vegetable container gardening is a breeze. [more inside]
posted by aniola on Apr 9, 2009 - 13 comments

Poaching – not pears, not birds, but plants. In the feed-me-Seymour vein of green and growing things, these are the plants that eat things – too bad they aren’t able to defend themselves from people and habitat loss. But wait! There’s help on the way. [more inside]
posted by mightshould on Feb 24, 2009 - 9 comments

Can you identify these common plants and animals? A study shows that increasingly, 9- to 11-year-old children can't. Quoth David Attenborough: "The wild world is becoming so remote to children that they miss out, and an interest in the natural world doesn't grow as it should. Nobody is going protect the natural world unless they understand it."
posted by [NOT HERMITOSIS-IST] on Aug 1, 2008 - 164 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

Seeds of Imagination operates on the premise that talking (er, typing) to your plants encourages interesting growth. Try: sun, water, love, happy, fruit, etc. If a word is recognized, you will see it float up toward your plant. If not, it just disappears without a trace. You may also change the color of parts of the plant by typing in colors. (note: Flash, subtle ad)
posted by crunchland on Apr 10, 2006 - 15 comments

The little coffee plant that almost died. A fascinating and inspiring radio piece detailing the story of the wild coffee plant, "cafe marron," that almost disappeared from the one island where it grew, Rodrigues, in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
posted by billysumday on Mar 29, 2006 - 3 comments

If you play a plant constant rock music, it will die. In the 1970s, Dorothy Retallack conducted a series of experiments to discover the effect certain types of music had on plants. The results might surprise you.
posted by 6am on Mar 3, 2006 - 58 comments

Nature's Control: Hired Thugs Bugs to police your garden. "If desired, you can keep ladybug adults from flying by "gluing" their wings shut, temporarily, with a sugar-water solution. Half water and half sugared pop (Coke, Pepsi, etc.), in a spray bottle, works fine."
posted by Gator on Feb 21, 2006 - 13 comments

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

Where do you hide your nasty-ass toilet plunger so the house guests won't see it? Under an attention-getting, gawdy as hell fake plant - duh.
posted by shoppingforsanity on Mar 29, 2005 - 20 comments

(A)bort, (I)gnore, (R)evert to Grandma's DNA A jaw-dropping revision to Mendelian inheritance: bad genes can be replaced from a secret ancestral stash. (The same researchers have previously mentioned other ways to get around Mendel.) Also, DNA gets a fake fifth letter.
posted by orthogonality on Mar 23, 2005 - 40 comments