February 24, 2011

When you consider that most of us think of warfare when we hear Agent Orange, it's rather surprising to find out that this chemical was routinely sprayed on Ontario roadways up until the 1980s, and yet the CBC is reporting that this claim is being made by the highway workers who were spraying the stuff. I guess Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" is not on the reading list at the Ontario Ministry of Transportation.

February 18, 2011

Reuters is reporting that Monarch butterfly populations have rebounded significantly since they were almost wiped out a year ago by unseasonably cold temperatures. Now if we could just stop eradicating the milkweed that the catapillers rely on for food then our beautiful insect friends might stand a chance of surviving into the next generation.

February 11, 2011

The New York Times has an interesting article on how plants have demonstrated an ability to optimize their response to certain kinds of pathogenic attacks by tying those responses to their circadian rhythms.

February 4, 2011

The National Science Foundation in the US is reporting that the spread of invasive plant species may be misunderstood. The idea that an invasive plant species gets into a new ecosystem and spreads uncontrollably may not be all that accurate. Researchers have discovered that the density of a plant species in its native environment is equal to - or in some cases lower than - its density in regions it has invaded.