David Dorward was a young boy when he first visited the Floral Clock, a combination of horology and horticulture initially installed in 1903 on a south-facing slope of the West Princes Street Garden in Edinburgh’s New Town area. “I remember when I was a child,” he said, “my mum and dad would bring me down…
Several large-scale, human-driven changes to the planet — including climate change, the loss of biodiversity and the spread of invasive species — are making infectious diseases more dangerous to people, animals and plants, according to a new study. Scientists have documented these effects before in more targeted studies that have focused on specific diseases and…
Scientists observed a wild male orangutan repeatedly rubbing chewed-up leaves of a medicinal plant on a facial wound in a forest reserve in Indonesia. It was the first known observation of a wild animal using a plant to treat a wound, and adds to evidence that humans are not alone in using plants for medicinal…
As the Israeli military campaign to destroy Hamas pummeled his neighborhood in northern Gaza, reducing buildings to rubble and forcing residents to flee, the Palestinian laborer realized that he was running out of food. The shops had closed, the markets had emptied and fighting prevented supplies from reaching them. So he and his remaining neighbors…
Duke University has decided to close its herbarium, a collection of 825,000 specimens of plants, fungi and algae that was established more than a century ago. The collection, one of the largest and most diverse in the country, has helped scientists map the diversity of plant life and chronicle the impact of humans on the…
