Tree-dwelling ants generally live in harmony with their arboreal hosts. But new research suggests that when they run out of space in their trees of choice, the ants can get destructive to neighboring trees. The research, published in the November issue of the American Naturalist, is the first to document that ants bore into live trees, and it reopens a centuries-old debate on the relationship betw...

The apple trees of yesteryear are slowly disappearing. Many apple varieties common in the United States a century ago can no longer be found in today`s orchards and nurseries. But some historic apple trees still survive in abandoned farmsteads and historic orchards throughout the U.S. Now, scientists interested in conserving these horticultural treasures have set out to identify and catalogue them...

Fire is often thought of something that trees should be protected from, but a new study suggests that some trees may themselves contribute to the likelihood of wildfires in order to promote their own abundance at the expense of their competitors. The study, which appears in the December 2009 issue of the journal The American Naturalist, says that positive feedback loops between fire and trees asso...

Norwegian scientists have found “mummified” pine trees, dead for nearly 500 years yet without decomposition. Norway’s wet climate seems perfect for encouraging organic matter to rot – particularly in Sogndal, located on Norway’s southwestern coastline, in one of the most humid, mild areas of the country. In fact, with an average of 1541 millimetres of rain yearly and ...

You`ve heard about flower power. What about tree power? It turns out that it`s there, in small but measurable quantities. There`s enough power in trees for University of Washington researchers to run an electronic circuit, according to results to be published in an upcoming issue of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers` Transactions on Nanotechnology. "As far as we know this ...

There are hundreds of choices when picking a crabapple tree from the nursery, but a Purdue University expert says only a handful are resistant to a widespread fungus or other serious diseases. After reviewing 33 years of data, Janna Beckerman, a Purdue assistant professor of botany and plant pathology, found that only five of 287 crabapple varieties had durable resistance to a serious disease of c...

A detailed examination of the wrist bones of several primate species challenges the notion that humans evolved their two-legged upright walking style from a knuckle-walking ancestor. The same lines of evidence also suggest that knuckle-walking evolved at least two different times, making gorillas distinct from chimpanzees and bonobos. "We have the most robust data I`ve ever seen on this topic...

A previously unrecognized player in the process by which gases produced by trees and other plants become aerosols—microscopically small particles in the atmosphere—has been discovered by a research team led by scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Their research on the creation and effects of these chemicals, called epoxides, is being featured in the journal S...

Large trees have declined in Yosemite National Park during the 20th century, and warmer climate conditions may play a role. The number of large-diameter trees in the park declined 24 percent between the 1930s and 1990s. U.S. Geological Survey and University of Washington scientists compared the earliest records of large-diameter trees densities from 1932–1936 to the most recent records from ...

Pine trees grown for 12 years in air one-and-a-half times richer in carbon dioxide than today`s levels produced twice as many seeds of at least as good a quality as those growing under normal conditions, a Duke University-led research team reported Aug. 3 at a national ecology conference. Carbon dioxide readings that high are expected everywhere by mid-century. The findings suggest some woody tree...