Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about biodiversity and the hidden quirks of the natural world. With each fern no wider than an inch, mosquito ferns turned ...

Who would have thought that venture capital just needed a little help from its friends in philanthropy to get its mojo back. For much of the past decade, the lion’s share of venture funding has gone ...

If you ever watch a duck float across a pond, gobbling up the vegetation coating the surface, that bird is way ahead of its time. The buoyant greenery is azolla, a tiny fern that grows like crazy, ...

Like a priceless painting, the beautiful blue and green swirl in a lake or pond presents a look-don’t-touch kind of situation. It’s the work of proliferating cyanobacteria, also known as blue-green ...

Fifty-five million years ago, when scientists believe the Earth was in a near-runaway state, dangerously overheated by greenhouse gases, the Arctic Ocean was also a very different place. It was a ...

Azolla is a floating aquatic fern with a very fast growth. That’s important for multiple reasons, the first being that the fern shows “great promise as a biofuel,” says Rothfel. While it’s been used ...