In spring and summer flowers pop up spontaneously in lawns, playgrounds, fields and even cracks in the pavement. But what do you see: weeds or wildflowers?

You might feel a little frustrated when you see wildflowers growing in the street. Why are they thriving while it can be a struggle to get garden flowers to bloom? The simple answer is that they are wild.

For millions of years, they had to make do with the sun, soil and rain nature provided. A windblown seed will land somewhere and try to germinate, but if the conditions are wrong it will not survive long. So many wildflowers evolved to make thousands of seeds (such as poppy, creeping thistle, wild carrot and purple deadnettle.

A dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) produces up to 200 seeds per flower and, on average, 15,000 seeds per plant. In an open field, about one-fourth (3,750) of the seeds land in a good spot and have the right genes to germinate and grow.

Home is where the wall is

Some plants have evolved more elegant tactics to make sure their offspring are set up for success.

A dandelion seed will go where the wind, or a child’s exhale takes it. The ivy-leaved toadflax (Cymbalaria muralis) takes a bit more care. Growing on the wall, their small lilac-blue and yellow flowers turn their heads towards the sunlight to catch the eye of a passing bee or hoverfly.

Once the flower is pollinated and the capsule with seeds begins to develop, the flower turns itself away from the light. Next, it pushes the capsule into a crevice on the wall. Those crevices are the perfect place for those seeds to grow. A wall may not sound like a particularly fertile place, but over time the wind and rain cause dirt and nutrients to get trapped in the pores. This is all the soil the ivy-leaved toadflax needs.

Strong, independent and generous

Keeping a grass lawn perfectly, uniformly green is a tough job and bad for the environment, as they don’t provide any habitat for pollinators, among other reasons. Playing grounds and other public fields don’t get much upkeep, but mysteriously the ground is green nonetheless.

Here, often white (Trifolium repens) and red clover (Trifolium pratense) take over the work of the gardener. These plants are the definition of strong and independent. Clovers are drought resistant, maintain soil moisture and fertilize the soil.

To fertilize the soil, clovers make little nodules on their roots which are the perfect home for rhizobium bacteria. The plant gives the bacteria a nice place to live while the bacteria provide the plant with nitrogen.

The clover shares this nitrogen with neighboring plants via their roots and via a vast network of fungi in the soil. Clover not only keeps a lawn green but also provides nectar to pollinators, such as bees, bumblebees, butterflies and moths.

Wildflowers are multitaskers. They are a source of food for your friendly neighborhood insects but also benefit the soil.

Dandelion provides nectar for over 187 different species of wild bees. Flowers like dandelion, thistle (Cirsium sp.), poppy (Papaver rhoeas) and chicory (Cichoriu intybus) grow taproots which penetrate deep into the ground and help them survive harsh conditions, such as drought.

Different wildflowers grow different kinds of roots. Together these roots make a great environment for underground life, including bacteria, fungi and bigger critters. These organisms aerate the soil , which boosts water regulation. This way the soil can soak up more water and your puddles will drain more quickly after a heavy downpour. These plants provide many unseen services to your own ecosystem.

But can you recognize and name them?

People used to eat all kinds of wildflowers or use them as medicine. For example, poppies were, and still are, used as cough medicine and sedative. You can still buy chicory root powder as a caffeine-free substitute for coffee.

Wildflowers have long been part of our cultural heritage as well. Victorians used wildflowers as gifts to convey feelings or secret messages. Poppies were a sign of pleasure, daisies (Bellis perennis) proclaimed innocence, stinging nettles (Urtica dioica) reported scandals and cornflowers (Centaurea cyanus) whispered of hopes in love.

But we are losing our awareness of the living world around us. The scientific term plant blindness describes our inability to notice the plants around us. In a 2010 UK study, teenage students were asked to recognize and name ten common wildflowers, but the vast majority couldn’t name more than three flowers.

However, it has never been easier to learn about plants. Apps that can recognize plants via your phone camera are widely available. Some people are even trying to share their enthusiasm about wildflowers on the street through botanical chalking—drawing a circle around a plant on the pavement and writing down its name in chalk.

The next time you see flowers growing through the pavement, why don’t you stop to take a look instead of just passing by these resilient and beautiful wildflowers.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Many prey species have defensive tactics to escape being eaten by their would-be predators. But a study published in Current Biology on September 9, 2024 has taken it to another level by offering the first video evidence of juvenile Japanese eels escaping after being swallowed into the stomachs of their fish predators.

With the aid of X-ray videography, they found that the eels back their way out, first inserting the tips of their tails through the esophagus and gills before pulling their heads free.

“We have discovered a unique defensive tactic of juvenile Japanese eels using an X-ray video system: they escape from the predator’s stomach by moving back up the digestive tract towards the gills after being captured by the predatory fish,” said Yuuki Kawabata of Nagasaki University in Japan. “This study is the first to observe the behavioral patterns and escape processes of prey within the digestive tract of predators.”

In an earlier study, the researchers including Kawabata and Yuha Hasegawa had shown that Japanese eels can escape from the gill of their predator after capture. What they didn’t know was how.

“We had no understanding of their escape routes and behavioral patterns during the escape because it occurred inside the predator’s body,” Hasegawa says.

In the new study, they found a way to see inside the predatory fish (Odontobutis obscura) using an X-ray videography device. To visualize the eel after it had been eaten, they had to first inject them with a contrast agent. It still took the team a year to capture convincing video evidence showing the escape process involved.

Their videos show that all 32 captured eels had at least part of their bodies swallowed into the stomach of their fish predators. After being swallowed, all but four tried to escape by going back through the digestive tract toward the esophagus and gills, they report. Of those, 13 managed to get their tails out of the fish gill, and nine successfully escaped through the gills. On average, it took the escaping eels about 56 seconds to free themselves from the predator’s gills.

“The most surprising moment in this study was when we observed the first footage of eels escaping by going back up the digestive tract toward the gill of the predatory fish,” Kawabata says.

“At the beginning of the experiment, we speculated that eels would escape directly from the predator’s mouth to the gill. However, contrary to our expectations, witnessing the eels’ desperate escape from the predator’s stomach to the gills was truly astonishing for us.”

Further study found that, despite the similarities, the eels didn’t always rely on the same escape route through the gill cleft. Some of them also circled along the stomach, seemingly in search of a way out.

The findings are the first to show that the eel Anguilla japonica can use a specific behavior to escape from the stomach and gill of its predator after being eaten. It’s also the first time any study has captured the behaviors of any prey inside the digestive tract of its predator, according to the researchers.

The researchers say that the X-ray methods used in the study can now be applied to observations of other predator-prey behaviors. In future work, they hope to learn more about the characteristics that make for a successful escape by the eels.

A virtual haptic implementation technology that allows all users to experience the same tactile sensation has been developed. A research team led by Professor Park Jang-Ung from the Center for Nanomedicine within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) and Professor Jung Hyun Ho from Severance Hospital’s Department of Neurosurgery has developed a technology that provides consistent tactile sensations on displays.

This research was conducted in collaboration with colleagues from Yonsei University Severance Hospital. It was published in Nature Communications on August 21, 2024.

Virtual haptic implementation technology, also known as tactile rendering technology, refers to the methods and systems that simulate the sense of touch in a virtual environment. This technology aims to create the sensation of physical contact with virtual objects, enabling users to feel textures, shapes, and forces as if they were interacting with real-world items, even though the objects are digital.

The technology is seeing increasing uses in the realms of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), where it is used alongside visual and auditory cues to bridge the gap between the virtual and physical worlds.

Notably, electrotactile systems, which generate tactile sensations through electrical stimulation rather than physical vibrations, are emerging as promising next-generation tactile rendering technologies. The sensation of touch is mediated by mechanoreceptors, which are tactile sensory cells located in the skin that transmit tactile information to the brain in the form of electrical signals.

Electrotactile systems artificially generate these electrical signals, thereby simulating the sense of touch. Precise and varied tactile experiences can be created by adjusting current density and frequency.

Despite their potential, existing electrotactile technologies face challenges, particularly in safety and consistency. Variations in skin contact pressure can lead to unstable tactile sensations, and the use of high currents raises safety concerns. To address these issues, the IBS research team developed a transparent pressure-calibratable interference electrotactile actuator (TPIEA).

TPIEA comprises two main components: an electrode section responsible for generating electrotactile sensations and a pressure sensor section that adjusts for finger pressure. Researchers greatly reduced the impedance of the electrode by applying platinum nanoparticles to an indium tin oxide-based electrode.

This not only decreased impedance compared to conventional electrodes but also achieved a high transmittance of approximately 90%. The integrated pressure sensor ensures that users experience consistent tactile feedback regardless of how they touch the display.

In addition, the research team conducted a somatosensory evoked potential (SEP) test to quantify tactile sensations. By examining the responses of the user’s somatosensory system to variations in the current and frequency of electrotactile stimulation, they were able to quantitatively differentiate and standardize tactile sensations.

The team successfully implemented more than nine distinct types of electrotactile sensations, ranging from those resembling hair to those resembling glass, depending on the current density and frequency of the electrical stimulation. The team further demonstrated that the TPIEA could be integrated with smartphone displays to reliably produce complex tactile patterns.

Additionally, the research introduced interference phenomena into the realm of electrotactile technology. The interference phenomenon pertains to the alterations in frequency and amplitude that occur when two electromagnetic fields overlap.

This allowed the researchers to elicit the same intensity of electrotactile sensation with a current density that is 30% lower than previously required and to achieve an approximate 32% enhancement in tactile resolution. This research demonstrates the highest level of tactile resolution among current electrotactile technologies, including the Teslasuit.

Lead researcher Park Jang-Ung remarked, “Through this electrotactile technology, we can effectively integrate visual information from displays with tactile information. We anticipate that the findings of this research will significantly enhance the interaction between users and devices across various AR, VR, and smart device applications based on interference stimulation.”