Latest news with #botany
Arab News
a day ago
- Health
- Arab News
Protecting houseplants from Saudi Arabia's summer heat
RIYADH: In Saudi Arabia's intense summer heat, having a houseplant adds a cozy element to homes and can improve owners' health, but caring for them can prove a challenge. Plants purify the air, reduce stress and create a natural sense of calmness in the middle of the daily hustle and bustle of major cities. However, as the country is reaching the peak of summer with daytime temperatures soaring above 40 degrees celsius, caring for indoor plants can come with difficulties. Without suitable care, the summer heat can easily damage thriving indoor gardens. Arwa Al-Otaibi, a plant owner and botany enthusiast, spoke to Arab News about the impact plants can make on homes, and the proper way to care for them. 'One of the most beautiful and relaxing things is when we visit places filled with plants and nature,' she said. • According to botany enthusiast Arwa Al-Otaibi, plants reconnect people with nature and the Earth, bringing comfort. • It is critically important to pay attention to where a plant should be placed. 'We feel a wonderful sense of comfort, relaxation and calm, so imagine when we see the place we live in filled with plants, and when we own plants in our homes.' According to Al-Otaibi, plants reconnect people with nature and the Earth, bringing comfort. This is felt by farmers, as she describes it, when they touch the leaves and soil, which she says 'significantly reduces cortisol levels.' Houseplants are more than just an aesthetic piece in the house; they can enhance both mental and physical well-being. This is supported by scientific studies, including a 2015 paper in the Journal of Physiological Anthropology which found that subjects felt more 'comfortable, soothed and natural,' and their blood pressure was lowered after transplanting an indoor plant. Plants can also improve air quality by filtering toxins and increasing humidity in the air, which is essential in Riyadh's dry weather. Caring for plants teaches 'patience and the slow waiting for results, such as the blossom of flowers and the growing of new leaves,' Al-Otaibi explained. 'This in itself inspires patience and calmness. Taking continuous care of a plant, even if in the small details, yields long-term results. It is critically important to pay attention to where a plant should be placed. Some plants should be put near windows to keep them exposed to sunlight, while others thrive under indirect light. Arwa Al-Otaibi, Botany enthusiast 'This is an example that reminds us of the long-term benefits of investing in ourselves, our health, and our relationships,' she added. It is critically important to pay attention to where a plant should be placed. Some plants should be put near windows to keep them exposed to sunlight, while others thrive under indirect light. Another point is that summer heat leads to faster evaporation, yet overwatering a plant can also be damaging. It is recommended to use well-draining pots and water early in the morning or after sunset to lower the stress on the plant. Also, maintaining a cooler temperature inside the house is essential for the growth of plants. 'Another important aspect of plant care in hot weather is ensuring the overall atmosphere in the room,' Al-Otaibi said. 'The appropriate temperature for plants varies depending on the type of plant, but in general, during hot weather, the home temperature should not exceed 25 degrees Celsius. 'When leaving the house, there should be some sort of ventilation, like leaving windows slightly open, to refresh the air when the air-conditioning is off.' Maintaining a balanced ecosystem for the plant is important. Misting leaves with water to protect them from becoming dry, or grouping them together to create a microclimate, could also be beneficial. In general, taking care of houseplants in Riyadh's intense summer heat can be a challenge, yet it is one can be overcome with proper attention. Healthy houseplants can elevate the overall atmosphere with greenery creating a beautiful indoor jungle, bringing life into a quiet living room.
Washington Post
09-07-2025
- Science
- Washington Post
We need to reset our relationship with nature. This book shows a way.
'I suspect that the real moral thinkers end up, wherever they may start, in botany,' the essayist Annie Dillard mused in 1974. 'We know nothing for certain, but we seem to see that the world turns upon growing.' The work of the British nature writer Richard Mabey is proof of Dillard's wisdom. He has been thinking about botany since the 1970s, when he published 'Food for Free,' his classic guide to edible plants, and his interest in vegetable life has always yielded a corresponding interest in human obligations. For him, botany is both a science and an ethics, and its primary tenet is that plants are — or ought to be — our equals.
Yahoo
28-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Pitcher this: MUN herbarium home to thousands of N.L. botanicals
In a room full of tall metal cabinets, Julissa Roncal carefully flicks through stacks of manila folders. They're filled with pages of expertly pressed and dried plant specimens. "See the little berries there? How do you dry a fleshy fruit and put it on a paper, completely dry?" she said, pulling out a page with a flat, dry branch with berries on it. They're perfectly preserved and dated 1966. "It does take a lot of time, effort and art to put those fleshy fruits on a dried specimen that will last for decades." Roncal is the curator of the Memorial University Agnes Marion Ayre Herbarium. The collection has about 100,000 specimens tucked in a small office on Mount Scio Road. "They are basically cataloged or distributed following a particular order that represents the classification," she explained. "Each specimen is labelled with the year it was collected, the person who collected it, and where it was found." She said about 80 to 90 per cent of the specimens are from Newfoundland and Labrador, and the rest are from other parts of the world. The collection, Roncal said, is not only important for research and history, but because it belongs to the people of the province. "This is a specimen of the Newfoundland provincial flower," she said, pulling out a page with a dried pitcher plant adhered to it, titled Carbonear, 1945. For decades, researchers and botanists have dried, pressed, and preserved specimens from three main categories: algae, mosses and vascular plants. The collection is used to train biology students at MUN, who learn about databases, manipulating large data sets, and get experience in botany and biology in systematics, taxonomy and species distribution. "We can extract DNA, for example, from these specimens for genomics research," Roncal said. And depending on the research, the collection can also aid in climatological research. "We can also track whether these species have changed their flowering times or their physiologies throughout time," she said. "For example, we can detect whether a particular species is flowering sooner or later and correlate it with climate change, so that information can be observed or rescued from the information that is hosted or housed here." Roncal said there are about sixteen thousand specimens digitized and accessible to the public. Work at the herbarium started years before Roncal's tenure as curator. She describes the herbarium's namesake — Agnes Marion Ayre — as an influential figure. "She was a suffragist, she fought for women's rights, for voting. So she's definitely an inspiration beyond botany for all of us," she said. Ayre was an amateur botanist, and collected and preserved some of the specimens in the collection. Roncal said those contributions were the starting point. "So it is the result of decades of botanical exploration and accumulation of these specimens," she said. But Ayre didn't just catalogue plant species she found, she also painted them with watercolours while in the field. There are about two thousand of Ayre's paintings between the Centre for Newfoundland Studies and the herbarium. It's a process that Roncal said added more detail than a typical press would. "Painting allows you to devote time to deep, thorough observation of the plant that you have in front of you," Roncal said, looking at a painting from the 1920s. "So that's why the combination of both is ideal to really get to know what species and identify with confidence what you're looking at," she said. "And putting a name to what you're looking at." Roncal said her team is working on digitizing the rest of the collection to make it more accessible. Download our to sign up for push alerts for CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. Sign up for our . Click .
Vogue
22-06-2025
- Politics
- Vogue
From the Archives: A Garden of American History at the White House
'A Garden of American History at the White House,' by Valentine Lawford, was originally published in the February 1967 issue of Vogue. For more of the best from Vogue's archive, sign up for our Nostalgia newsletter here. "The first formal flower gardens genuinely worthy of the name" in the history of the White House are the Rose Garden and the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden. President Kennedy, who arranged to have both redesigned, was "admirably impatient" of their progress. Now Mrs. Johnson watches over the gardens as they grow. Two rows of crab apples border the long sides of the Rose Garden which in autumn blazes with chrysanthemums, and at each of the four corners stands a magnolia soulangeana planted by President Kennedy. In the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden topiary hollies, set in squares of blue-grey dusty miller and flowers interrupted by herbs, lead to the grape arbour where, in sweet weather when the air is freighted with the smells of rosemary, thyme, and clipped grass, Mrs. Johnson likes to serve tea. "Altho' the times are big with political events, yet I shall say nothing on that or any subject but the innocent ones of botany and friendship…" The words are Thomas Jefferson's written in 1803 from the White House to General Lafayette's aunt in France, in a letter announcing that he was personally shipping to her a selection of the plants and seeds of the United States: magnolia, sassafras, tulip-poplar and dogwood, chestnut oak, box oak, white oak, and wild rose.
The Guardian
18-06-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
Plantwatch: Relative of common weed can grow up to 30ft tall on Kilimanjaro
The common groundsel is a weedy plant often seen on waste ground and roadsides, growing up to about 40cm (16in) tall. But on mountains in east Africa relatives of the groundsel can grow up to 9 metres (30ft) in height. One of these giant groundsels is Dendrosenecio kilimanjari, which only grows high up on Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania and looks like something from another world – a woody trunk that can branch out like a candelabra, sprouting a large inflorescence atop each branch. Other Dendrosenecio species grow on other mountains, all superbly adapted to the harsh upland environments where temperatures can plunge as low as -20C (-4F) in biting winds. Their thick stems are insulated by jackets of dead and withered leaves, they use an antifreeze agent to prevent ice forming in their tissues, and at night their leaves 'sleep', folding up to help keep the plant warm. Rainfall can be scarce and the giant groundsels store water in the pith of their stems. As a result of their spartan existence, they can grow extremely slowly.
