Posts tagged as:

flowering plants

Upupa, Oprah. Oprah, Upupa.

February 8, 2010

Good news, everyone! No, really! The approximate U.S. release date for BBC’s new nature-glam documentary “Life” has been set. It will be sometime this March on the Discovery Channel, according to wikipedia, but sadly, BBC has willfully ignored my helpful suggestion *not* to replace David Attenborough’s narration with a pedestrian American track by Sigourney Weaver, [...]

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Your Daily Parasite Fix: The Corpse Flower

January 26, 2010

Since any parasites you may be hosting are at this moment getting their daily fix of you, why not get your daily fix of parasites? It turns out that in honor of the International Year of Biodiversity, a parasitologist at the American Museum of Natural History is hosting a Parasite of the Day blog — [...]

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On the Origin of Flowers

December 15, 2009

A few posts ago, I told you that star anise is interesting because it belongs to a group of plants that split from the rest of the other flowering plants early on, and that for a long time, scientists felt plants like these retained a lot of the features of the first flowers.
Scientists think that [...]

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We’re (a Plant) Family?

November 23, 2009

This week is Thanksgiving, and with that comes many hours spent cooped up with people you share little to nothing with but genetics. These contrasts typically become most noticeable once some fun-loving soul decides to baste the conversation with unadulterated far-(right/left)wing politics. Isn’t family great! : )
Well, the same thing happens in the plant world, [...]

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The Curious Taxonomy of Star Anise

November 18, 2009

Star anise’s job moonlighting as Tamiflu caught my eye because star anise is in a group of plant families with a very interesting pedigree.
It is in the Illiciaceae (Ill-ik-ee-ay’-see-ay), a small family whose members are all in one genus – Illicium. There are only about 40 species in the whole family (the pea family, for [...]

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Star Anise and You

November 15, 2009

Plants have been getting short shrift around here lately. It’s time to fix that.
Sitting in the spice rack of many an Asian home, and a very few American homes, is the unusual looking fruit of an ordinary-looking plant with an unexpected use. Here is that plant:
And here is its fruit:
The plant is star anise, Illicium [...]

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