Humans have been brightening their otherwise dark and dreary December domiciles with evergreen boughs of holly since at least the age of the Druids. The practice has continued into the modern era, with the festive shiny green leaves and bright red berry-like fruits (botanically-speaking a drupe with four hardened stones) becoming synonymous with the Christmas […]
If two plant species native to Europe are introduced to North America and then hybridize to produce fertile offspring, do these descendants constitute a new species? That is the question Marion Ownbey posed in a 1950 paper in the American Journal of Botany. Ownbey, curator of the Washington State University herbarium from 1939-1974, discovered that […]
The paintbrushes (genus Castilleja) are a genus of about 200 mostly herbaceous plants, distributed across the Americas and northern Asia. They are, in many respects, annoying. Other plants feel this way because paintbrushes are hemiparasites, which derive part of their nutrition from the roots of their host (hemi- means half), and the remainder by photosynthesis. […]