smithsonianmag:

Amazing Close-Up Photos of Seeds

The Millennium Seed Bank, as it is called, was founded in 2000 as an effort to stock away viable seeds, now, should we need them to restore plant populations in the future. Nearly 100,000, or about one quarter, of the world’s plant species, are currently threatened. “We can’t afford to let these plants, and the potential they hold, die out,” says Kew, on its Web site.

The Millennium Seed Bank is a global seed garden of epic proportions. By 2010, the project had amassed about 10 percent of the world’s 400,000 plant species, and the trajectory is to reach 25 percent by 2020.

Wouldn’t you like to see it? The vault itself, of course, is hidden from the public eye. But, MSB’s seed morphologist Wolfgang Stuppy and visual artist Rob Kesseler have come up with a clever workaround. - Continue reading at Smithsonian.com.

Photos by: Rob Kesseler

Ed note: The Noah’s Ark of plants and flowers.

Source: blogs.smithsonianmag.com

jtotheizzoe: “The Beauty Of Microscopic Plant Seeds Vincent Van Gogh painted sunflowers, and Claude Monet painted irises. Rob Kesseler paints seeds, only he uses electrons to do so. Working with the Millennium Seed Bank, Kesseler takes scanning...
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jtotheizzoe:

The Beauty Of Microscopic Plant Seeds

Vincent Van Gogh painted sunflowers, and Claude Monet painted irises. Rob Kesseler paints seeds, only he uses electrons to do so.

Working with the Millennium Seed Bank, Kesseler takes scanning electron microscope images of plant seeds on the microscopic scale. He digitally paints them in order to bring out their unique physical and biological traits: Leafy wings that evolved to carry them aloft on the wind, spikes to hitch a ride on an animal’s coat, or a burly coat to survive a trip through the digestive system of a herbivore.

Check out more of his images at Co.Design or at his full Phytopic gallery.

(via itsokaytobesmart)

Source: fastcodesign.com

awkwardsituationist:

mushrooms — they don’t need psilocybin to be magical. photos by elaine owen, taylor f. lockwood, mike potts, gorastos papatsanis and steve axford, (click pic for species, photographer and, when given, location.)  

(see also: mycologist paul stamets discusses how mushrooms will save the world)

(via worclip)

Source: awkwardsituationist