Plants & Fungi
Plants built the atmosphere, feed every animal and cover the land in green. Fungi, neither plant nor animal, quietly recycle the dead and connect the living. These readings explain both.
6 articles · about 23 minutes of reading
Plants & Fungi
Carnivorous Plants
In soils too poor to live on, some plants turned the tables and began eating animals. Snap traps, pitfalls, flypaper and suction pumps: the botany of hunting.
Article · 4 min read
Plants & Fungi
Flowers and Pollination
Flowers are advertisements aimed at insects, birds and bats. The deal, nectar for pollen delivery, is 130 million years old and feeds most of the world.
Article · 4 min read
Plants & Fungi
Fungi
Neither plant nor animal, fungi are a kingdom of their own: the planet's recyclers, the partners of nearly every plant, and the source of bread, beer and penicillin.
Article · 4 min read
Plants & Fungi
Photosynthesis: How Plants Eat Light
Every leaf is a solar panel that turns sunlight, water and air into sugar and oxygen. It is the chemical reaction that feeds almost everything alive.
Article · 3 min read
Plants & Fungi
Seeds
A seed is a plant packed for travel: an embryo, a lunchbox and a coat, able to wait for years and cross oceans. Most of what people eat is seeds.
Article · 4 min read
Plants & Fungi
Trees and Forests
The largest and oldest living things on Earth are trees, and the forests they form hold most of the planet's land species and a vast store of carbon.
Article · 4 min read