Tag: plants

Spring again

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
April 22, 2002
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Someone recently sent me pictures of the campus of Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas (my alma mater), showing it practically buried in beautiful spring flowers. Yes, spring is creeping northward, and soon multicolored flowers and rich green grass and leaves will replace our landscape’s current predominant shades of gray, white and brown. Exactly when …

Plant communication

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
March 19, 2001
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“I talk to the trees, but they don’t listen to me…” sings one of the characters in the musical Paint Your Wagon. Maybe he’s just not speaking the right language. Far from being inert lumps, plants can and do communicate–both with other plants, and, interestingly, with insects. Of course, we’re not talking Shakespearean sonnets or …

Have yourself a genetically modified little Christmas

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
December 14, 1999
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Searching for the perfect Christmas tree can be a hassle, and even a tree that looks great on the lot can turn out to have weird branches, flat spots or gaps once it opens up. But someday soon, every Christmas tree may be perfect, thanks to science. Around 40 million Christmas trees are harvested every …

Fruit

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
July 27, 1998
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just came back from a vacation that included a brief stay in the Okanagan. Among the treasures from that visit were two containers of delicious fresh apricots and cherries, courtesy of a friend who owns an orchard near Oliver. The amount of fruit produced by the trees of the Okanagan Valley alone is staggering: everywhere …

Pumpkins

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
October 27, 1997
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Maybe it’s their cheerful orange color or their round, sort of huggable shape, but people love pumpkins. And this is the time of year when pumpkins really come into their own. In mid-October we’re eating them in pies, and by the end we’re carving them into jack-o-lanterns. All the fruits we call pumpkins belong to …

Citrus fruits

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
December 2, 1996
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Never mind carols in the snow, decorated trees and Canadian Tire commercials, for me the real proof Christmas is just around the corner is the appearance of boxes of mandarin oranges. Equating citrus fruit with anything wintry, though, is really rather odd, because citrus fruits are notoriously unsuited for cold climates. Citrus fruits come from …

Weeds

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
June 3, 1996
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When I was a kid, I thought dandelions were cool, from their delightful yellow flowers that broke up the monotony of green lawns to their puffballs of parachute-wearing seeds which were so much fun to blow into the neighbor’s grass. Now that I’m grown up, however…well, actually, I still think dandelions are cool, but those …

Roses

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
February 15, 1996
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Valentine’s Day, just past, might just as well be called Rose Day, so popular is that particular flower that day. But few people reflect, as they give or receive these beautiful blooms, on the science associated with them. Allow me to rectify that oversight. The term “rose” is applied to flowering plants that are members …

Seeding

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
May 30, 1995
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The modern farm is highly mechanized, but the goal of the farmer driving a $100,000 tractor across multiple hectares remains the same as that of a farmer scraping the ground with a pointed stick: a successful harvest. Before you can harvest a crop, though, you’ve got to plant it. The trick to planting is to …

Perennials

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
March 28, 1995
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Despite the fact that snow covers the ground as I write this, it is, in fact, spring; and spring means, among other things, the appearance of plants, sometimes from garden beds where you’d swear there was nothing but a few dry sticks. Suddenly green shoots spring up, and before you know it, flowers are growing …

Wood

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
January 30, 1995
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“How much wood would a woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood?” asks the familiar tongue-twister, to which the reply would have to be, in parts of southern Saskatchewan, “Not much.” The prairies just aren’t known for their abundance of trees. Northern Saskatchewan, however, is an entirely different matter. My continuing travels around the …

Flowers

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
April 4, 1994
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It’s a warm, it’s sunny, it’s spring, and the ’60s musical Hair is coming to town. What better time to celebrate flower power? The use of flowers for gifts and decoration has a long, long history (the ancient Romans and the ancient Chinese were both wild about roses, for example), but to a plant our infatuation might …