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Fruits and vegetables quiz: Do you know where pumpkins, blueberries and broccoli come from?
By Laura Geggel published
Do you know where your staple fruits and vegetables were domesticated? Take Live Science's quiz to find out.

Plants self-organize in a 'hidden order,' echoing pattern found across nature
By Olivia Ferrari published
Scientists have discovered a "perfect disordered hyperuniform" pattern in how plants arrange themselves across many dry landscapes that allows them to make the most of water resources.

Scientists discover gold nanoparticles hidden in spruce tree needles
By Richard Pallardy published
Spruce tree needles contain tiny gold particles — and they could indicate large gold deposits beneath the surface.

Do figs really have dead wasps in them?
By Marilyn Perkins published
Does every fig you eat really have a dead wasp inside?

Cairo Fossil Forest: The oldest forest in North America with 385 million-year-old trees
By Sascha Pare published
The Cairo Fossil Forest is the second oldest in the world. These forests mark a turning point in Earth's history because they changed the composition of the atmosphere, scientists say.

Chinese scientists create multicolored glow-in-the-dark succulents that recharge in sunlight
By Sascha Pare published
Researchers injected "afterglow" phosphor particles into succulents to create the world's first multicolored glow-in-the-dark plants, featuring blue, green, red and blue-violet luminescence.

Plants have a secret, second set of roots deep underground that scientists didn't know about
By Olivia Ferrari published
A global analysis deep in soil found 20% of plants studied have an unexpected deeper set of roots more than 3 feet underground.

Kilimanjaro's giant groundsels: The strange plants that thrive on Africa's tallest mountain
By Sascha Pare published
Giant groundsels are rare plants that grow up to 30 feet (9 meters) tall. They are endemic to the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro, a dormant volcano in Tanzania and Africa's tallest mountain.

'This should not be published': Scientists cast doubt on study claiming trees 'talk' before solar eclipses
By Chris Simms published
Claims that spruce trees synchronize their responses to a solar eclipse were widely reported recently — but many researchers are sceptical of the results.

See the reconstructed home of 'polar dinosaurs' that thrived in the Antarctic 120 million years ago
By Sascha Pare published
Fossil sites in Australia hold pollen and spores from the dinosaur age, when the island straddled the Antarctic Circle. Now, scientists have re-created the habitat of "polar dinosaurs," using these plant remains.
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