67
votes
Accepted
Does the "Blood of Jesus on the Cross" flower only bloom during the Holy week (just before Easter)?
No, that is a New Zealand pohutukawa (Metrosideros excels) and it blooms for Christmas, not Easter.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrosideros_excelsa
http://www.doc.govt.nz/nature/...
- 103k
48
votes
Does the "Blood of Jesus on the Cross" flower only bloom during the Holy week (just before Easter)?
No.
This flower is the flower of the Metrosideros excelsa, the tree is also called pōhutukawa tree and New Zealand Christmas tree.
According to its wikipedia page the tree:
The tree flowers from ...
- 29k
39
votes
Is moderated livestock grazing an effective countermeasure for desertification?
In the wild, herds of buffalo, elk, etc. cluster together to protect themselves from predators.
As the densely populated group moves around, it clears out vegetation and leaves manure, which their ...
- 3,702
19
votes
Accepted
Do trees soak up pollution?
According to the US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service publication THE EFFECTS OF URBAN TREES ON AIR QUALITY
Trees remove gaseous air pollution primarily by uptake via leaf stomata,
though ...
- 103k
18
votes
Accepted
Has the Gympie Gympie tree driven humans to commit suicide because of the pain from its sting?
Gympie-Gympie is said to have the most painful sting of any plant in Australia with reference to this source.
Can the pain last for years?
Answer: Partly yes up to one year referring to research by ...
- 22.7k
17
votes
Is moderated livestock grazing an effective countermeasure for desertification?
This paper claims
This commentary summarizes the evidence supporting holistic management (HM) and intensive rotational grazing (IRG) to demonstrate the extent to which Sherren and coauthors (2012) ...
- 619
11
votes
Is moderated livestock grazing an effective countermeasure for desertification?
I'm not an expert on this specific topic, but will put a few contradictory things to balance some of the other answers. A quick search found an article in the journal Rangelands with the title "...
- 227
11
votes
Accepted
Are the ingredients listed in "Macbeth" common plants?
Macbeth dates back to around 1606.
Tongue of Dog
While the most common name for the plant seems to have been hounds tongue, there are a few instances of it going by another name: Dogs tongue.
I found “...
- 27.8k
11
votes
Accepted
Can one generate enough electricity from a plant to power a cellphone?
Not impossible, but highly unlikely
The technology described does exist. Scientifically this is called Plant Microbial Fuel Cell. However Bioo's claims of 40 W/m² seem greatly exaggerated.
People ...
- 26.6k
11
votes
Did humans kill 50% of the world's trees in the last 100 years?
The UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO)'s forest report State of the World’s Forests states that forests cover 4 billion hectares of the Earth's surface:
Forests currently cover about 4 ...
- 18.7k
10
votes
Is it possible for a pine tree to grow in your lungs?
The show 'Monster Inside Me' actually has documentation of an older man with respitory problems who did asperate a raw pea and it did germinate and start to grow inside his lung. It was removed on ...
- 109
9
votes
Is watering plants under a hot sun bad?
There was a joint Hungarian-German study on the subject led by Dr. Gábor Horváth at Eötvös University in Budapest, Hungary.
A team of physicists, troubled by the lack of scientific evidence for the ...
- 191
6
votes
Does the coffee plant use caffeine to kill bugs and surrounding plants?
Caffeine on insects
That "caffeine kills insects" is an old myth:
"I find it considerably interesting and even amusing," said Bussey Professor of Biology Carroll M. Williams. &...
- 43.9k
5
votes
Does natural corn grow giant?
The Wikipedia page has since been rephrased to contain the following, more accurate, paragraph:
The maize plant is often 3 m (10 ft) in height, though some natural strains can grow 13 m (43 ft). The ...
- 14k
5
votes
Do some GMO plants provide bigger yields and more efficient use of land?
Yes.
This meta-analysis read 147 original scientific papers about GMO crops. On average those papers found a 22% increase in crop yields and a 37% decrease in pesticide use for GMO vs non-GMO crops.
...
- 11.9k
4
votes
To what extent do needle trees contribute to fine dust pollution?
In coniferous regions, it is possible for conifers to be a major source of particulate emissions. A good study is Characterization of a large biogenic secondary organic aerosol event from eastern ...
- 103k
3
votes
Does broccoli have a nervous system?
From Involvement of receptor potentials and action potentials in mechano-perception in plants Australian Journal of Plant Physiology (2001) volume 28, page 567-576:
Plants are always exposed to ...
- 103k
3
votes
Accepted
Has the Javan devil leaf nettle (urtica urentissima) been shown to cause any deaths?
tl;dr
No. Not directly and not without serious doubts. There were botanical misidentifications in taxonomy of the plant and for the aetiology of the consequences of a sting as well.
The worst ...
- 43.9k
1
vote
Does Asclepias gigantea cause blindness?
Yes there can be a varying degree of vision loss, but it is only temporary.
From the Indian Journal of Ophthalmology. 2009 May-Jun; 57(3): 232–234.
A retrospective analysis of 29 patients who ...
- 599
1
vote
Does grass alone produce enough oxygen for life?
No.
The pure reason why some areas (with a particular set of meteorological and soil conditions) nurture trees (and establish themselves as stable forests) is because they are in general more ...
- 758
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible