The desert plant Welwitschia mirabilis has accompanied my writing for a while. It featured in my book Exzentriker des Lebens / Life on the Edge. The info in the books is mostly 1990s plant physiology. Now however, researchers have published a high quality genome structure of Welwitschia in comparison with its closest relative - which isn't very close. I've used the opportunity to also have a look at other plant life in deserts on other continents - in the context that the climate disaster will produce more extreme conditions for life to cope with, so we'd better understand how it does.
The resulting feature is out now:
How to survive in the desert
Current Biology Volume 31, Issue 17, 14 September 2021, Pages R1017-R1019
FREE access to full text and PDF download
See also my twitter thread with all 2021 features that are now in the open archives.
Welwitschia_mirabilis, Plate 5369 from vol89 (1863) Curtis's Botanical Magazine (source: wikipedia)
bonus illustration not included in my feature, as images in portrait format are awkward with the column format we use.
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