Our Planet

Calhoun tends some 450 apple varieties, more than four times the number commercially cultivated in this country.

Apples of Your Eye

Fruit sleuths and nursery owners are fighting to save our nation's apple heritage...before it's too late

They pop their heads out of the water to keep track of family members.

Otterly Fascinating

Inquisitive, formidable and endangered, giant otters are luring tourists by the thousands to Brazil's unspoiled, biodiverse waterscape

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Rain Man

Snow, sleet, hail or volcanic eruption cloud physicist Peter Hobbs will find a way to fly into it

Scientists believe the bacteria may hold clues to the origins of life itself.

Subterranean Surprises

Scientists are discovering that caves more complex than we ever imagined may yield vast riches about the origins of life

American ginseng—whether wild or cultivated (for sale at left in New York)—commands higher prices than Asian varieties.

Getting to the Root of Ginseng

Questions about the herb's health benefits haven't cooled the red-hot market in wild American ginseng

When scouts discover a suitable plant near their nest, they leave a pheromone, or chemical, trail, to efficiently guide legions of worker ants to it. The workers soon stream back to the nest in six-inch-wide columns bearing loads up to ten times their own weight.

Small Matters

Millions of years ago, leafcutter ants learned to grow fungi. But how? And why? And what do they have to teach us?

Enormous gypsum crystals in a Naica cavern

Crystal Moonbeams

A pair of Mexican miners stumble upon a room filled with what could be the world's largest crystals

Joinery techniques in even the largest modern structures are similar to those used by Henry David Thoreau to build his simple cabin.

Building to a Different Drummer

Today's timber frame revivalists are putting up everything from millionaire mansions to a replica of Thoreau's cabin

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Keepers of the Flames

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Prince of Tides

Before "ecology" became a buzzword, John Steinbeck preached that man is related to the whole thing

This image shows an about 1.6 inch (4 cm) large male Yellow-winged Darter (Sympetrum flaveolum) from the side

Dragonfly Dramas

Desert Whitetails and Flame Skimmers cavort in the sinkholes of New Mexico's Bitter Lake Refuge

The sulfuric lake of Kawah Ijen Mountain's cauldron, Indonesia

Fire and Brimstone

A long-outdated approach to sulfur mining sends hundreds of Javanese workers deep into the crater of an active volcano

A desert tortoise (emerging from its den) may use the same burrow for many years.

Tunnel Vision

Arizona Naturalist Pinau Merlin celebrates life in the desert by keeping a close eye on it

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Getting in Deep

The unending quest for oil has now led drillers to vast reserves lying more than a mile beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico

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Heavenly Harbingers

High altitude, night-shining clouds are becoming more common, which could signal climate changes

Breathing Fire

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Message in a Bottle

By studying objects cast up on our shores, researcher Curtis Ebbesmeyer traces the flow of ocean currents

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Seeing Science Six Miles Up

City patterns, farm history, ancient seabeds, old mountains and new, the why of clouds: take a look

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Master of the Deep

Before Smithsonian scientists do underwater research, Michael Lang makes them seaworthy.

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It's Camelot in the Desert

For Dromedary Trekkers in Australia's Outback, it's Camelot in the Desert

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