Floral Flatulence

Nature is reporting the astonishing finding that plants... ahem... break wind. Apparently, in the 250 years since Joseph Priestley noticed that plants produce oxygen, nobody bothered to check whether they were be giving off anything else. Now, a group from Germany - perhaps noticing strange odours in the Greenhouse - has found that plants also produce methane. And not just a smidgeon of it. Altogether, plants may be responsible for up to 30% of global methane emissions.