#thale cress

[ingevr]

Work in progress! Can’t wait until it’s ready for the masking tape to come off!

Acrylic on canvas board. It’s fine to practice on, but the boards low quality sometimes feels like I’m fighting my materials 😂

Also I stayed up way too late for this and now I’m very tired

[elektroskopik]

A widely studied lab plant has revealed a previously unknown organ | Science News

A widely studied lab plant has revealed a previously unknown organ

A cantilever-like plant part long evaded researchers’ notice in widely studied Arabidopsis thaliana, grown in hundreds of labs worldwide.

A common lab plant that’s been poked and put under microscopes for decades may seem unlikely to keep secrets. But in widely studied Arabidopsis thaliana, scientists have identified the “cantil” — a newly reported plant organ named for its cantilever-like way of branching off of the main stem. The structure appears in only some A. thaliana and only under certain conditions, researchers report online June 15 in Development.

“If you told me of a new organ in a weird plant in Amazonia, I wouldn’t be surprised at all,” says François Parcy, a plant biologist at CNRS in Paris, who was not involved in the study. “What struck me is this happened in Arabidopsis. This is something that’s really surprising.”

Molecular biologist Timothy Gookin first suspected contamination or a mutation when he noticed some A. thaliana with odd stalks jutting out from the stem, like half-finished bridges. It took 12 years of experiments at Penn State to show that the rare stalks are a new type of plant part and to explain their trigger: delayed flowering.

Like many other plants, short days prompt A. thaliana, which is in the same family as cabbage and mustard greens, to shore up resources; long days tell it to churn out flowers. Cantils form when that transition from stockpiling to blooming is postponed, as the plant keeps growing while waiting for the flowering signal,

Cantil: arrow

[thebashfulbotanist]

It’s Wednesday (believe it or not), which means it’s time to celebrate Wednesday’s weed! Weed of the week is a species that’s much more important than its diminutive size would indicate: Arabidopsis thaliana. This species (thale cress) is the most common plant model organism, used in similar ways to Drosophila fruit flies, mice, and E. coli in lab experiments. It has been used in a number of genetic, physiological, and developmental studies (to name only a few categories of work in which it has been important), and has helped us greatly improve our knowledge of the way that plants work. 

Of course, it’s also a weed. A. thaliana is native to Eurasia and Africa, but doesn’t belong in North America. It’s small, but can be a somewhat unsightly lawn pest. This particular one was photographed (on the hood of a car - spot the botanist in the reflection!) near where it was pulled in a Virginian parking lot. 

[universe-news-in-blog]

Plants Use Sixth Sense for Growth Aboard the Space Station

Plants Use Sixth Sense for Growth Aboard the Space Station

Although it is arguable as to whether plants have all five human senses – sight, scent, hearing, taste and touch – they do have a unique sense of gravity, which is being tested in space. Researchers with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency will conduct a second run of the Plant Gravity Sensing study after new supplies are delivered by the sixth SpaceX commercial resupply mission to theInterna…

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