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, ...

Determining the major drivers of species diversification and phenotypic innovation across the Tree of Life is one of the grand challeges in evolutionary biology. Facilitated by the Germplasm Bank of ...

A new study shows that DNA duplication has been vitally important throughout the evolutionary history of gymnosperms, a diverse group of seed plants that includes pines, cypresses, sequoias, ginkgos ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...