13 Great Solar Concepts Inspired By Plants

Posted by Queuebot in Gadget on September 24, 2009 at 9:52 pm

Every other day, we get to hear about some new solar powered creation. Here are 13 amazing solar concepts that draw inspiration from plants. After all, plants are Mother Nature’s solar generators. Pictured is the Power Flower by Art Energy Design, which collects wind energy in the petals and solar energy in the leaves!

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From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by angel12.

 
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Incredible Tree Growth

Posted by Jill Harness in Everything Else, Travel & Places on September 17, 2009 at 10:17 pm

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One of the most amazing things about plants is their ability to grow through all kinds of obstacles. When trees manage to do so, the spectacle is even more amazing because it is on such a grand scale. There are even more cool ones when you follow the link.

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Where Did All the Flowers Come From?

Posted by Miss Cellania in Science & Tech on September 8, 2009 at 10:58 pm

Charles Darwin was a lifelong fan of flowers, but was unable to figure out how they evolved. There were fossils of flowering plants going back 66-100 million years, which didn’t help much because flowers evolved much earlier. Recently, however, scientists are turning to DNA analysis of contemporary plants to decode where they came from. They are also finding older fossils than ever before, as far back as 136 million years ago. Paleobotanist James A. Doyle says the fossil record is the only thing that will bring together the many theories of flower evolution.

If you could travel back to 130 million years ago, you might not be impressed with the earliest flowers. “They didn’t look like they were going anywhere,” Dr. Doyle said.

Those early flowers were small and rare, living in the shadows of far more successful nonflowering plants. It took many millions of years for flowers to hit their stride. Around 120 million years ago, a new branch of flowers evolved that came to dominate many forests and explode in diversity. That lineage includes 99 percent of all species of flowering plants on Earth today, ranging from magnolias to dandelions to pumpkins. That explosion in diversity also produced the burst of flower fossils that so puzzled Darwin.

Genetic research is providing answers to how plants can switch on genes that control how different plants parts grow, and to use sexual reproduction to increase genetic diversity. Link

 
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How the Venus Flytrap Evolved

Posted by Miss Cellania in Science & Tech on July 22, 2009 at 8:34 am

Charles Darwin was fascinated with the Venus Flytrap and other carnivorous plants. How did such a thing arise through natural selection? Botanists Don Waller and Thomas Gibson of the University of Wisconsin, Madison believe they have figured it out. The Venus Flytrap descended from an earlier plant that had sticky leaves that acted as flypaper.

First the ancestral plant must have adapted to move its tentacles and leaves in a particular direction, giving it a greater chance of sticking to and engulfing a passing insect.

Next it sped up how quickly it detected prey and tried to respond.

Then the plant would have had to find a way to become selective, so it only tried to trap live prey and not any detritus that landed upon it.

Finally, it must have evolved its tentacles into sensory hairs and teeth that detect and wrap around prey, respectively, while also losing its sticky glands and growing new digestive glands capable of digesting the victim’s corpse.

The adaptations led to the plant’s ability to eat larger insects for more nutrition. Link -via the Presurfer

 
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Pootre Art From Plum Trees

Posted by Jill Harness in Arts & Crafts, Home & Garden on June 26, 2009 at 9:49 pm

Peter Cook and Becky Northey started making what they call Pooktre, the shaped plum trees into art and furniture. They started by making trees into a coffee table and a mirror frame. The chair above is one of the greatest. They harvest the trees in the fall and make new art from the stumps, which make new growth.

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Yes ... Now Even Your Houseplants can Twitter

Posted by Urbanist in Gadget, Home & Garden on March 30, 2009 at 6:04 pm

Pothos has thousands of followers and gives regular updates. Pothos … is also a plant. A built-in moisture meter relays messages about the plant’s current state in order to remind its owner when it needs watering. This is, one has to admit, a potentially wonderful innovation for those of us with thumbs that are anything but green. Still, Twitter is all the rage these days, sure, but plants Twittering? Has this fad gone too far?

Are you slowly killing your houseplants? Is it because you’re too busy Twittering? THEN HAS THE INTERNET GOT THE SOLUTION FOR YOU!

link -via huffingtonpost

 
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Karl Blossfeldt's Nature Art

Posted by Queuebot in Arts & Crafts on February 19, 2009 at 1:35 pm

Insanely beautiful art found in nature, the planet really does do it’s best to impress us with its amazing artwork.

Karl Blossfeldt (1865-1932), a German artist and professor, captured these ‘art forms in nature’ and used them to instruct his students.

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From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by JKirchartz.

 
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12 Incredible Time-Lapse Plant-Growth Videos

Posted by Queuebot in Video Clips on February 14, 2009 at 3:25 am

Plants grow too slow to see most of the time – making these videos seem like secret access points to a hidden world that operates at a radically different speed.

For those of you unfamiliar with plants (they’re a lot like pets, only lower maintenance) these 12 (!) time-lapse videos of plants and flowers growing and blooming should adequately acquaint you with their natural majesty. The only downside to plants is that they take a while to grow, but as you’ll see in these videos, it’s a beautiful process, which can be made all the more heart rending when paired with the right music.

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From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Urbanist.

 
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Five of the World's Weirdest Plants

Posted by Miss Cellania in Everything Else on January 13, 2009 at 11:50 am


Some plants don’t act like plants at all. Some trap prey, mimic animals, or smell bad. This picture is an example of Nepenthes lowii, which is related to insect-trapping plants, but prefers to attract birds with a tasty laxative secretion. It then survives on bird droppings! Read about this and four other weird plants at Blogleech. Link -via the Presurfer

 
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100+ Amazing Plants and Animals

Posted by Jill Harness in Animal, Blog & Internet, Everything Else on November 25, 2008 at 2:01 am

WebUrabanist has compiled a number of posts from their sister site, Webecoist. Together, the posts add up to over 100 super interesting flora and fauna species. I think my favorite is the 10 Strangest Animal Self-Defense Mechinisms.

 
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