plants

Earlier this December, the Kansas City Rose Society launched its Save the Pillars Campaign, which aims to raise $20,000 by the end of the year to help restore the historic stone structures in the Laura Conyers Smith Municipal Rose Garden in Loose Park.

A Missouri Botanical Gardens Victoria lily held up under 142 pounds, besting competitors from gardens and zoos around the world. The St. Louis institution has been growing water lilies since 1894.

In late summer and fall, prairie grasses in Kansas’ Flint Hills can grow as high as eight feet tall. But right now, the grass is still short and wildflowers are the stars of the prairie.

We haven’t been giving the Plant Kingdom enough credit. Plants can move, attack, communicate, and adapt — even though they don’t have what's normally defined as a brain. But do plants meet the criteria for intelligent life? That’s the question Paco Calvo and Natalie Lawrence explore in their book “Planta Sapiens: Unmasking Plant Intelligence.”

Native plant species are better adapted for our environment, great food for bees and butterflies, and available to purchase at nurseries and plant shops across the Kansas City region. Can you dig?

Charlotte Taylor has named 500 new plant species, more than any other living female taxonomist. She's one of 60 taxonomists at the Missouri Botanical Garden.

Nurseries or nursery dealers that buy, sell or propagate the plants would have their certificate suspended by the Department of Agriculture. Experts say the plants threaten Missouri’s native ecosystems because they can escape cultivation and don’t have natural competitors to slow their spread.

Overland Park is updating city codes to make space for planned native landscapes, which have long been banned as "weeds." That could mean front yard gardens featuring milkweed, blue sage, native flowers and other species that once dominated the northeastern Kansas landscape.

The proliferation of traditional grass lawns have brought problems like flooding, river contamination and pests. But the local ordinances and the rules of homeowners’ associations across the Kansas City area practically insist on Euro-style turf.

One of the Missouri Botanical Garden’s corpse flowers named Octavia is expected to bloom this week. Its yet-unnamed clone will likely bloom next week.

Prairies used to stretch across all of the central United States. Only a portion of that ecosystem still exists, but there are still some impressive sites in Kansas and Missouri as well as ongoing efforts to restore the native landscape.

Hundreds of youth affiliated with different religious groups have been pitching in to help Kansas City remove an invasive plant species.