Tomato plants are covered in tiny anti-pest booby traps
The hairs on tomato plants are actually tiny pest traps Jalaal Research Group/University of Amsterdam For hungry insects, walking along a tomato stalk in search of a green meal can be like navigating a minefield. Jared Popowski at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands was trying to measure the mechanical properties of tomato plants in the lab. Then a tiny hair on one of the stalks started oozing liquid – and it happened so quickly that his camera barely caught it. He had inadvertently triggered one of the plant’s pest-protection mechanisms. Source link