All posts tagged: trees

Stone Age burial ground reveals deep family trees

Stone Age burial ground reveals deep family trees

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. If you could share your grave with someone, who would it be? Researchers investigating the genetic relationships among those buried at the Swedish Stone Age site of Ajvide have revealed that people buried together weren’t always immediate relatives. “Surprisingly enough, the analysis showed that many of those who were buried together were second- or third-degree relatives, rather than first-degree relatives—in other words, parent and child or siblings—as is often assumed,” Helena Malmström, an archaeogeneticist at Uppsala University, said in a statement. “This suggests that these people had a good knowledge of their family lineages and that relationships beyond the immediate family played an important role.”  Malmström and colleagues describe their results in a study recently published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences. They investigated the relationships of individuals in four graves from a hunter-gatherer culture that existed at the Ajvide archaeological complex on the Swedish island of Gotland approximately 5,500 years ago. While agriculture …

Rainfall became irregular during Earth’s hottest periods, raising global warming concerns

Rainfall became irregular during Earth’s hottest periods, raising global warming concerns

Published by Jenni Sidey

The climate record holds some of its best warnings in stone, soil, and leaves. In a new study, scientists from the University of Utah and the Colorado School of Mines looked back to one of Earth’s hottest eras to see how rain behaved when the planet ran far warmer than today. What they found challenges existing knowledge regarding climate change and rainfall. The research examines the early Paleogene, roughly 66 to 48 million years ago. During that stretch, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels sat about two to four times higher than modern levels. The team used that deep-time heat as a test case for how a hotter world can reshape the water cycle. Instead of asking only how much rain fell in a year, the researchers focused on something that often gets missed. They asked when rain fell and how steady it was across seasons and years. Their conclusion is blunt. Under extreme warming, rainfall can become far less reliable, even in places that are not deserts. Climate in the modern world and early Palaeogene, including …

What can toughen Louisiana coast against worsening storms? Four years and 30,000 trees

What can toughen Louisiana coast against worsening storms? Four years and 30,000 trees

Published by Sam Flores

MERAUX, La. — Across the calm waters behind a pumping station near Lake Borgne, hundreds of saplings stand out in the mist, wrapped in white plastic cylinders. To get there and to other sites like it, organizers have ferried dozens of volunteers week after week in airboats. They have a trailer equipped with supplies. Rubber boots in all different sizes. Bins full of snacks for the end of a hard day’s work. One day, they hope to see 30,000 fully grown trees like bald cypress and water tupelo at this and other sites that restore the natural barrier of wetlands into the protective forest it once was. The goal is for the roots of these native trees to hold the earth around New Orleans in place as it slips farther below sea level, create habitat for wildlife and help shield the city from storms. Much of that natural barrier was lost after Hurricane Katrina, which killed over 1,000 people and caused over $100 billion in damage in 2005. But many have been working since then to restore …

Spruce trees stumped (sigh) when it comes to predicting eclipses

Spruce trees stumped (sigh) when it comes to predicting eclipses

Published by skeptic

Feedback is New Scientist’s popular sideways look at the latest science and technology news. You can submit items you believe may amuse readers to Feedback by emailing feedback@newscientist.com   Astreenomers Feedback is shocked – shocked – to learn that a grove of trees in northern Italy did not, in fact, predict a solar eclipse. Now, we know what will be going through most readers’ heads at this point: “Are you saying somebody thought trees really could predict a solar eclipse?” To which the answer is “surprisingly, yes”. The partial solar eclipse in question occurred on 25 October 2022. Ahead of this, botanists led by Alessandro Chiolerio had inserted electrodes into Norway spruce trees to monitor their bioelectrical activity. In April 2025, they reported their findings: “Trees anticipated the eclipse, synchronizing their bioelectrical behaviour hours in advance. Older trees displayed greater anticipatory behaviour with early time-asymmetry and entropy increases.” With graceful inevitability, here comes the debunking, published in Trends in Plant Science on 6 February and flagged to us by reporter Matthew Sparkes (who should get …

No, trees can’t anticipate a solar eclipse

No, trees can’t anticipate a solar eclipse

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. In April 2025, a scientific study went viral online for a particularly wild claim. A forest of Norway spruce trees (Picea abies) in the Dolomites of northern Italy appeared to rapidly synchronize their cellular-level electrical signals—known as electromes—in the hours leading up to a partial solar eclipse in October 2022. If true, the discovery by the Italian Institute of Technology represented a possibly major development in understanding how plants communicate with one another. Despite many critics’ skepticism, headlines describing a “forest-wide phenomenon” of talking trees spread quickly across the internet. Now, one team of scientists believes they have a far more plausible explanation for the supposedly cosmic event in the Dolomite mountains. In short, the spruce trees were charged up with electricity from a recent thunderstorm. The evidence is laid out in a study recently published in the journal Trends in Plant Science—and the paper’s lead investigator isn’t mincing words about it, either. “To me, [the April 2025] paper …

Neighborhood trees linked to lower rates of heart disease, study finds

Neighborhood trees linked to lower rates of heart disease, study finds

Published by Jenni Sidey

Living in a city means constant exposure to traffic, noise, crowds, and concrete. But what you see outside your front door may quietly shape your heart health over time. New research suggests that the kind of greenery lining your street matters more than you might think. A large study led by the University of California, Davis, found that city neighborhoods with more visible trees were linked to lower rates of heart disease. Areas dominated by grass or shrubs showed the opposite pattern. The findings add a surprising layer to what science knows about green space and health. Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death in the United States. In 2023 alone, it claimed more than 900,000 lives, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That toll equals roughly one in three deaths nationwide. Any factor that shifts risk, even slightly, carries real weight. What You See On Your Street Matters You may assume that any patch of green helps your health. The new research challenges that idea. Scientists found that neighborhoods with …

Americans planted entire forests of exploding Australian trees

Americans planted entire forests of exploding Australian trees

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show. FACTS: Beaver Skull Obsession, Aussie Widowmakers, Koalas Eating $#!% By: Jess Boddy This week on Weirdest Thing (and for the next few episodes), I’ll be hosting the show without Rachel while she’s away on parental leave. That means I’m bringing on pairs of my favorite creator friends to host the show with me! This week, we’ve got two of the funniest people I know—rickypeacock and MattyisTalking. These two are members of the Goo Crew stream team, …

Why Are So Many New York Gallery Shows This Winter About Trees?

Why Are So Many New York Gallery Shows This Winter About Trees?

Published by Jenni Sidey

A rich tradition of tree art has sprouted in biennials across the world, with installations composed of saplings, snags, and perennials in various stages of development popping up at seemingly every big art event. (A recent case in point: the centerpiece of last year’s inaugural edition of the Sky High Farm Biennial in Upstate New York was a 1972–73 Harrisons piece resembling an orchard featuring actual trees planted in a gallery.) In 2022, the trend spurred Wallpaper to ask: “Tree art is putting down roots: branching out or barking fad?” It is now a question worth posing in New York, where more than a few galleries this season have turned over their spaces to arboreally themed shows. In these exhibitions, artists are painting living trees, reusing dead ones, and even using bark as canvas. Branches, leaves, forests, and groves are the true stars of the winter season. None of this is exactly shocking, of course. Ecologically minded artists have been with us forever, and climate change dominates the headlines like never before, even as conservatives …