German naturalist Georg Everhard Rumpf joined the Dutch East India Company in 1653 and shipped off to Batavia in the Spice Islands (now Jakarta, Indonesia). He settled in Ambon, and there he spent the rest of his life st...

(Photo: AP)It looks a lot like bacon . . . and it tastes like it, too! Researchers at the Oregon State University have bred a strain of a seaweed called dulse that tastes strongly of bacon. Dulse is very nutritious and i...

(Image Via Roger Meissen)Many vegetarians/vegans feel that raising animals for food is an inhumane and barbaric practice, yet they gladly chomp down on fresh fruits and vegetables without a care in the world for what tho...

The Brooklyn Botanical Garden isn't just a great place to find real beautiful plants, it also features fantastic craft versions of real botanical specimens -or at least it does now thanks to the Knit, Purl, Sow exhibit....

Latin is a dead language, as dead as it can be. It killed the ancient Romans,and now it's killing me! But it's payback time. In July, The International Botanical Congress voted to relax the rules that required that al...

We often post about endangered animals, but plants can go extinct as well. Plant species' fortunes are affected by the actions of humans and other animals. Consider the strange case of the plant pictured here known as Ca...

Plants and herbs play a big part in the magic of Harry Potter. The students of Hogwarts encounter plants that scream, pulsate, spew poison, and most importantly, become ingredients in magic potions. What's more is that m...

Have you ever seen a saguaro cactus like this? This is a cristate ("crested") cactus, a result of fasciation, which is explained at TYWKIWDBI. The cactus somehow leads to an explanation of the Stevie Nicks song "Edge...

What if you could train plants for national security? A biologist at Colorado State University working with the Department of Defense is doing just that. Genetic engineering is making plants react to threats they never e...

Over 700 paired species of fig trees and wasps have symbiotic relationships. The fig tree host wasp eggs, and the wasps pollinate the fig trees in return. But according to a new study, if the wasps don't pollinate the...