Plants tend to hoard DNA, not throwing anything out. The extra genes they hold inside can mutate to produce new physical traits. Holding onto the extra genes increases the tempo of evolution for the ...

Gymnosperm means “naked seed” and comes from the same Greek root as gymnastics, which means to exercise naked. This group of plants is so named because the seeds are not enclosed inside an ovary, ...

For many years, Charles Darwin was haunted by flowers. In 1859, the naturalist published his most famous work, On the Origin of Species, the book that is generally regarded as the foundation of ...

This paper includes a survey of the nature of the primary vascular system in a large number of extinct gymnosperms and progymnosperms. The vascular system of a majority of these plants resembles ...

The Sago palm, Cycas revoluta, of course, is not a palm at all, but a gymnosperm, and thus more closely related to pine trees than palms. The botanist in me wants to remind you that gymnosperms are an ...

This film explores gymnosperms, a class of non-flowering seed plants, primarily represented by conifers in North America. It discusses their unique reproductive processes, including the production of ...

Gymnosperms (Gymnospermae) are a group of seed-bearing plants with ovules borne on the edge or blade of an open sporophyll, the sporophylls usually arranged in cone-like structures. The other major ...

ARGUABLY the world’s weirdest plant, Welwitschia mirabilis is a tangled mass of shredded, fraying leaves in the Namib desert. For a thousand years, perhaps more, it grows just two long leaves, which ...