![Homalanthus nutans, or Mamala. Photo: [Mark Marathon / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0) Mark Marathon]](/sites/default/files/styles/news_teaser/public/tradPLANTS_sam.jpg?itok=W_t_Vb4j)
The healing properties of some plants used in traditional Samoan medicine have been scientifically proven in a new study. Published on Friday in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology it looked at 14 Samoan plants.The Samoa Observer reports all were found to have positive effects on wounds, burns
Chinese researchers have discovered that the plant community showed higher sensitivity to plant invasions than the soil microbial and fauna communities on tropical coral islands.
New Guinea is home to more than 13,500 species of plant, two-thirds of which are endemic, according to a new study that suggests it has the greatest plant diversity of any island in the world – 19% more than Madagascar, which previously held the record.
With their rich repertoire of anti-infective substances, medicinal plants have always been key in the human fight to survive pathogens and parasites. The search for herbal drugs with novel structures and effects is still one of the great challenges of natural product research today.
Plants and vegetation play a critical role in supporting life on Earth, but there is still a lot of uncertainty in our understanding of how exactly they affect the global carbon cycle and ecosystem services.
Right now, the best thing we can do to help stop the alarming spread of coronavirus is to stay home. But that doesn’t mean we can’t find pleasure in nature or help the environment.
Mike Demotta is the Curator of Living Collections at Hawaii’s National Tropical Botanical Garden (NTBG) on the island of Kauai. He is passionate about his speciality, native plants and the important role they play in Hawaiian culture.
This study examines the status of plant conservation in Oceania, where most islands have experienced two waves of anthropogenic habitat alteration and extinction, following Austronesian and European contact.
Welcome to PNGplants — information for students, researchers, development workers, community leaders, government and non-government agencies and others working on plant identification, conservation and diversity of plants in Papua New Guinea.
PNGplants database
An internet accessible herbarium plant collection database of plants from Papua New Guinea
PNGtrees project
An interactive identification guide to the common trees of Papua New Guinea
Plant collectors of Papua New Guinea
Information about Papua New Guinean plant collectors and support staff
A series of handbooks (Vol 1 - Vol 3) pertaining to the flora of Papua New Guinea. The aim was to document the diversity of plants so that the conservation status of the species which make up the various communities can be monitored more accurately.