Ancient forest had giant vines, towering trees – Technology & science – Science – LiveScience – msnbc.com

• One of the earliest forests in the world was home to towering palmlike trees and woody plants that crept along the ground like vines, a new fossil find reveals.  

  The forest, which stood in what is now Gilboa, N.Y., was first unearthed in a quarry in the 1920s. But now, a new construction project has revealed for the first time the forest floor as it stood 380 million years ago in the Devonian period.

  "For the first time, we actually have a map of about 1,200 square meters (12,900 square feet) of a Devonian forest," said study researcher Chris Berry, a scientist at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom. "We know which plants were growing where in this forest, and how they were interacting."

Botanists agree to loosen Latin’s grip – The Washington Post (via Ida Wye)

• Globally, scientists discover 2,000 new species per annum. As many as one in five of the world’s plant species have yet to be identified, and not until they are named and known to the scientific community can they can be protected and studied further. “You can’t talk about it until that point,” said James Miller, vice president for science at the New York Botanical Garden. “It’s not the end of knowing a species, it’s the beginning.”