Contact with nature has long been suspected to increase positive feelings, reduce stress, and provide distraction from the pain associated with recovery from surgery. Now, research has confirmed the beneficial effects of plants and flowers for patients recovering from abdominal surgery.

Plants, genetically modified to ease the breaking down of their woody material, could be the key to a cheaper and greener way of making ethanol, according to researchers who add that the approach could also help turn agricultural waste into food for livestock.

New species of flowering plants called proteas are exploding onto the scene three times faster in parts of Australia and South Africa than anywhere else in the world, creating exceptional 'hotspots' of species richness, according to new research published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Honeybees are important to plants for reasons that go beyond pollination, according to a new study published in the December 23rd issue of Current Biology, a Cell Press publication. The insects' buzz also defends plants against the caterpillars that would otherwise munch on them undisturbed.

The wild pea pod is big and heavy, with seemingly little prayer of escaping the shade of its parent plant.

Plant researchers from McGill University and the University of California, Berkeley, have announced a major breakthrough in a developmental process called epigenetics. They have demonstrated for the first time the reversal of what is called epigenetic silencing in plants.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) today called for increased investment in a plant breeding technique that could bolster efforts aimed at pulling millions of people out of the hunger trap.

The United States has been under assault for decades by a wide variety of alien plants and animals, and it is not often that one of these aliens faces a counterpunch. But in a collaborative project with several other institutions, the University of Rhode Island has scored a knockout.

Hybrid plants, like corn, grow bigger and better than their parents because many of their genes for photosynthesis and starch metabolism are more active during the day, report researchers from The University of Texas at Austin in a new study published in the journal Nature.

Researchers at the University of Delaware have provided what is believed to be the first experimental evidence that plants can take up nanoparticles and accumulate them in their tissues.

The answer to successful revegetation of native flora is in sourcing genetically diverse seed not necessarily relying on remnant local native vegetation to provide seed.

Only 2 genes make the difference between herbaceous plants and trees