Don't miss the big stories. Like us on Facebook. Beneath the forest canopy, or overstory, of towering trees is a second layer of vegetation known as the understory. It is composed of shrubs, saplings, ...

I was up in the mountains this past weekend and got to visit with one of my favorite trees — the striped maple (Acer pensylvanicum). I did some googling and it turns out striped maples are a lot of ...

Although pollen has covered cars for weeks and allergy sufferers have been sneezing, we think of sex as being the realm of animals. But plant sex can be quite interesting, especially in species that ...

Scientists have known for some time that trees not only have a sex, but can sometimes switch between sexes. But they haven’t always known why. Now, as The Washington Post’s Amy Ellis Nutt reports, a ...

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American Striped maples are boring-looking understory ...

Along with other local gardeners, I recently went on a trip to New England to see the wonderful fall color in the deciduous forests up there. A large proportion of the color was provided by maples, ...