Trop Picks: Sarracenia purpurea
Why do we have a hard time getting our heads around the fact that carnivorous plants like Sarracenia purpurea are temperate?
The Jungle
The Jungle
Trop picks: Phalaenopsis venosa
To take this photograph of a Phalaenopsis venosa in flower in Sulawesi, I had to climb up on the shoulders of a hardy guide. A minute later, as I got back down on to what I thought was solid ground, I fell through a pile of debris on the forest floor into a deep hole. Luckily, I grabbed onto a nearby root, so I was not lost forever, although I did lose my lens cap.
The Jungle
Trop Picks: Tulips
The science behind how tulips “remember” winters past.
The Jungle
Trop Picks: The Sex Life of Bananas
Oh yes, I’m going there, and it’s not what you think.
The Jungle
Trop Picks: Orientalist Science
The line between scientific and unscientific thinking is finer than we think.
The Jungle
Trop Picks: Darwin’s Orchids
For Charles Darwin, orchids were no less central to his theories of natural selection than apes are to our understanding of human evolution. In a typical flower, the…
The Jungle
Trop Picks: Impatiens
The Indian subcontinent is home to over two hundred species of impatiens, with two centres of biodiversity, in the Eastern Himalayas and the Western Ghats….
The Jungle
The Most Beautiful Tree in the World
“Of the trees which grow in the level portions of the valley, the chenar is by far the most striking. As it grows in…
The Jungle
Trop Picks: Vanilla
You probably don’t know this (and kudos if you did), but that bottle of pure vanilla extract in your pantry originated from an orchid,…
The Jungle
Mountain Report: Kargil
The boughs of the apricot trees in Fayaz Shabir Hussain’s peaceful little orchard in Kargil are heavy with fruit, and the ground beneath them…