A plant can look perfectly fine one week and suddenly act like it has given up on life the next. Leaves droop, growth slows, and watering stops working the way it should. That shift doesn’t happen by ...

It is easy to study what you can see. Researchers know a lot about how plants work aboveground, but what happens out of sight under the surface may control more than we once thought. It is easy to ...

A plant’s root system has a profound effect on its overall health. Look at the roots of a sick, struggling plant, and you will often see a sick, struggling root system. While plants may tolerate ...

When looking at forests, we hardly get to see beyond a bunch of green. However, for a plant ecologist, forests represent a much more complex world consisting of different species. This diversity of ...

Plant species vary greatly in how efficiently they convert sunlight into organic matter, how fast they reproduce, how much nutrients and water they need, how much carbon they store, or how fast their ...

Many backyard plants look vibrant above ground, green leaves, steady growth, and no obvious signs of trouble. But gardeners ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. A new DNA method lets scientists measure plant roots underground, opening doors for climate research and smarter farming.

Plants may appear idle or passive to our eyes, but they are spectacularly busy, churning out a bewildering array of chemical signals that help them prosper in their environment. Some 20% of such ...

Despite plants and vegetation being key to the Earth's ecosystem, little is known about the origin of their roots. However in new research, scientists describe a transitional root fossils from the ...

A plant's root system is crucial to its overall health. Look at the roots of a sick, struggling plant, and you will generally see a sick, struggling root system. While plants are fairly tolerant of ...