Conifers exhibit a number of chemical and anatomical mechanisms to defend against pests and pathogens. Theory predicts an increased investment in plant defences under limited nutrient availability, but while this has been demonstrated for chemical defences, it has rarely been shown for anatomical defensive structures. In a long-lived woody plant, we tested the hypothesis that limited nutrient a...

The water-soluble part of the methanolic extract from the aerial parts of Scrophularia crypthophila, through chromatographic methods, yielded three new resin glycosides, crypthophilic acids A - C (1-3). Compounds 1-3 are tetraglycosides of (+)-3S,12S-dihydroxypalmitic acid. The structures of these and 10 known compounds were elucidated by spectroscopic and chemical means. All natural resin glyc...

Resin is a chemical and physical defensive barrier secreted by many plants, especially coniferous trees, with insecticidal and antimicrobial properties. The degradation of terpenes, the main components accounting for the toxicity of resin, is highly relevant for a vast range of biotechnological processes, including bioremediation. In the present work, we used a resin-based selective medium in o...

To find aquatic organisms in tree resin may seem to be highly unlikely, but the fossil record provides numerous amber-preserved limnetic arthropods (e.g., water beetles, water striders, and crustaceans) and microorganisms (e.g., bacteria, algae, ciliates, testate amoebae, and rotifers). Here we explain the frequently discussed process of embedding aquatic organisms in tree resin based on field ...

The deposition of antimicrobial plant resins in honey bee, Apis mellifera, nests has important physiological benefits. Resin foraging is difficult to approach experimentally because resin composition is highly variable among and between plant families, the environmental and plant-genotypic effects on resins are unknown, and resin foragers are relatively rare and often forage in unobservable tre...

Terpenes, a large family of natural products with important applications, are commonly associated with plants and fungi. The diterpenoids dehydroabietic and abietic acids are defense metabolites abundant in resin, and are used as biomarkers for conifer plants. We report here for the first time that the two diterpenoid acids are produced by members of several genera of cyanobacteria. Dehydroabie...

We demonstrate how phyllotaxis (the arrangement of leaves on plants) and the ribbed, hexagonal, or parallelogram planforms on plants can be understood as the energy-minimizing buckling pattern of a compressed sheet (the plant's tunica) on an elastic foundation. The key idea is that the elastic energy is minimized by configurations consisting of special triads of periodic deformations. We study ...

Background & Aim: The most therapeutic properties of different species of Pinus class are antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory characteristics, soothing effect, resolver of skin itches, wound, acne and rash healer and improvement of ulcers and chronic lesions. In ancient medical literature of Iran, different parts of Pinus classes, particularly its resin, had been used for treat...