Declines in pollinator populations and monarch butterflies require restoration of habitats with the plants and floral resources that support them. Monarch butterflies in particular lay their eggs exclusively on milkweed species, which their caterpillars require as a food source. Restoring populations of milkweeds can involve planting plugs grown from seed, but recommendations for breaking dormancy […]

The largest uncertainty in humans’ contribution to climate change from land use is the fate of carbon that was belowground in pre-modified forests. In a recent study published in AoB PLANTS, Dean et al. produced high-resolution 3D-models of the rarely measured zone near the base of large, mature trees by using photogrammetry. The models led […]

Maize and wheat are globally important food crops. The two species can be grown as an intercrop, with substantial land sparing in the order of 20%, as expressed by a land equivalent ratio of approximately 1.2. In a recent study published in AoB PLANTS, Gou et al. measured the nutrient uptake and photosynthesis rate of […]

In southern Africa a pattern of Phragmites spp. reed expansion has occurred in recent decades that has shown a similar trend to cryptic invasions reported in North and South America. A recent Editor’s Choice article published in AoB PLANTS by Canavan et al. used molecular techniques to explore the phylogeography of P. australis and P. […]

Predicting the effects of climate change on tree species and communities is critical for understanding the future state of our forested ecosystems. In a recent study published in AoB PLANTS, Rodgers et al. used a fully factorial precipitation by warming experiment in an old-field ecosystem in the northeastern United States to study the climatic sensitivity […]

Nursery pollination is an unusual plant–insect interaction in which an insect is both pollinator and seed-predator. Depending on the abundance of the nursery pollinator and of other pollinators this interaction can range from mutualism to parasitism and it is thus likely to vary geographically. In a recent study published in AoB PLANTS, Scopece et al. […]

The ability to perform hygroscopic movements has evolved in many plant lineages and relates to a multitude of different functions such as seed burial, flower protection or regulation of diaspore release. In a recent Editor’s Choice article published in AoB PLANTS, Gallenmüller et al. provide an analysis of spore liberation in mosses in response to […]

Understanding the dispersal of wetland plants is important to the conservation of species in patchy or isolated wetland environments. In a recent study published in AoB PLANTS, Flaherty et al. explored the potential for wetland seed dispersal by white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) in a high-elevation wetland complex in Canaan Valley, West Virginia, USA, by collecting […]

Plants simultaneously interact with beneficial and antagonistic organisms such as mycorrhizal fungi and herbivores, respectively. In a recent article published in AoB PLANTS, Orians et al. studied the net effects of such interaction on plant internal resources and growth and found that while both organisms had an impact on the plant individually, the magnitude or […]

Climate change with increasing periods of drought is expected to reduce the yield of biomass crops such as poplars. To combat yield loss it is important to better understand the molecular mechanisms that control growth under drought. Cytokinins are important phytohormones that regulate plant growth. In a recent study published in AoB PLANTS, Paul et […]

When closely related plant species occur in the same region, their distributions at small spatial scales are expected to depend on whether they have evolved different tolerances to variation in the environment. Whether species can coexist in the long term should depend on differences in their ability to compete for resources. In a recent article […]

For conservation of rare riparian species, avoiding an impact to hydrodynamic processes, such as water tables and flooding dynamics, may be just as critical as avoiding direct impacts on the number of plants.