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.

(via theherbarium)

sciencecenter:

The year’s best microscopy photos

The closer you look, the more amazing nature appears. These amazing microscopy pictures prove just that. Be sure to click through and check out the whole gallery.

Top - Red algae Scagelia

Bottom left - A common East coast U.S. fern, Polypodium virginianum, showing a cluster of spore-filled sporangia and specialized protective hairs called paraphyses.

Bottom right - Beta-tubulin expression of a Drosophila third instar larval brain, with attached eye imaginal discs.

themugnottaken:

Christophe Jacrot, Winter in Town (New York City)

It feels so nice to be home. 

brain-food:

NYC Skateboarding in the 1960s
by Bill Eppridge