Featured Plant

Quaking Aspen

Quaking Aspens have beautiful shows of fall colors. Not only are the colors of the changing leaves astounding to look at, but the timing of the changing leaves is interesting as well. Groves of Quaking Aspens generally will change colors and drop their leaves at the same exact time. Although the changing seasons are ultimately the reason why the trees lose their leaves, the reason why it all happens at once has less to do with the changing weather. Each individual "tree" in a grove of Quaking Aspens is actually called a ramet and the entire grove is called a genet. The "trees" are all connected to each other via underground stems. Each ramet is a stem that breeches the top soil and becomes what we would call a tree. The genet is the entire organism, which includes all the underground plant parts and individual ramets. So when the leaves change all at once, it is because the "separate trees" are merely branches of the same plant.

Plants In The News

Elephant-shaped flower cured my ills, Queens man says

Sam Lal is convinced the elephant-shaped Amaranth bloom in his back yard in an incarnation of the Hindu god Ganesh. The nearly 4-foot-tall flower grew in June and began to resemble an elephant's head and trunk in August. Lal said that ailments that had plagued him for months disappeared. "This formation came to heal my illness," he said of his relief from pain due to a bone spur near his spine and bulging discs in his neck. "They say God comes in many forms. I figure this has taken the form of a plant to come into my yard to bless me." With winter chills approaching, Lal is covering the flower with a plastic bag at night to protect it from cold. "It's a little upsetting," he says. "It hurts me to know I'll lose it."

Did You Know?

"Plant food" is not really plant food.

Most people know that plants need fertilizer to truly thrive. In many gardening references, the process of giving fertilizer to a plant is referred to as feeding the plant. Also, some fertilizers are even called "Plant Food". Unfortunately, plants do not need "plant food", since they make their own food. Plants combine carbon dioxide and water, with the energy from sunlight, to make sugar. This process is called photosynthesis and the resulting sugar is what is used to provide energy to the plant, just as a person would get energy from eating sugar.

Fertilizing your garden plants would be analogous to taking vitamins. They help the plants thrive, but are not needed in the same amounts as the actual plant food. The fertilizers help the plant to be truly healthy, but would mean nothing if the plant did not have enough light to drive photosynthesis. Providing a plant with fertilizer and no light would be like a person eating only vitamin pills and nothing else.