Clik here to view.
Cures: Ancient and Modern…
Image: William Woodville, Medical Botany, volume 3. London: James Phillips, 1793. One of the great aspects of science is that it builds upon what has been done previously and makes it better. Well,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Hay makes cheese holier…?
Image: ‘June’, from Il Breviario Grimani. Anonymous, circa 1510. As if to prove that every story has a botanical link – if you look hard/close enough – how about this cheese-based revelation? For many...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Illuminating the mesocosm…
Image: PiccoloNamek/Wikimedia Commons Of all the abiotic factors one could imagine, what’s the one that should always be good for plants? Light gets my vote. In fact it’s so good it features as the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bearded bardic botanist, bruised but not bested?
Image: From The Herball, Or Generall Historie of Plantes by John Gerard. Published by John Norton, London, 1597. An association between botany and literature is extremely old, from the agricultural...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Botanists on the move
Image: Wikimedia Commons Nobody ‘does’ botany for the money (well, I don’t!!), but at least it’s a career that can involve life-changing travel. And as if to underline the global (well, pan-European at...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Composites bounce back into favour…
Image: Greg Hume/Wikimedia Commons Question: where does the great majority of the rubber in rubber tyres* (tires for our American cousins…) come from? Answer: natural rubber from the Pará rubber tree,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Has leukaemia met its Waterloo?
Image: Mark Hofstetter/Wikimedia Commons Although we may not appreciate this fact when we take our heavily packaged pills, tablets and capsules from the chemist, more than 50% of prescription drugs are...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Plants flex their muscles… [or, Onion feeling the pinch…?]
Image: Wikimedia Commons Would you ‘Adam-and-Eve’ it? And an item that is this month’s winner in the ‘I’m really not making this up’ category is the revelation that plant material has been used to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Sport and drugs…
Image: Prescott Pym/Wikimedia Commons When the words ‘drugs’ and ‘sport’ occur in the same sentence, it’s usually for all the wrong reasons, e.g. performance-enhancement by illegal substances to help...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Plants and the diamond connection
Image: Keith S. Brown/Wikimedia Commons The much-derided ancient ‘wisdom’ that is the Doctrine of Signatures (DoS) has it that God wanted to show Man what plants were medically useful by providing...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Deputy Managing Editor Job for Botany PhD at Annals of Botany
Annals of Botany: position of Deputy Managing Editor The Annals of Botany AoB office in Leicester is expanding with a much needed PhD-level person who will assist with editing and publishing the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Plants vs mobile ’phones
Image: Wikimedia Commons. When it comes to plants and mobile phones, it’s usually good news, e.g. the proliferation of devices that celebrate our angiosperm cousins with the suffix ‘-berry’ in their...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Weed anatomy in the spotlight
Weed Anatomy. Hansjoerg Kraehmer and Peter Baur. Wiley-Blackwell, 2013 As an old-fashioned botanist who loves few things more than investigating plant structure-and-function (or just plant structure!)...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Plant-insect relationships, a double-edged sword
Flowering plants have had an intimate relationship with insects for millions of years. Indeed, this is often cited as an example of co-evolution , particularly with regards to the flowers and their...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Inspiring new discoveries of the nature of plant life at the molecular level...
The 11th Congress of International Plant Molecular Biology took place at Iguazú Falls, located at the Argentine-Brazilian border. This was an outstanding event, co-organized by the two Latin American...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Will a Martian save the Earth?
Plant scientists are essential to help provide solutions to three of the most important current and future threats to mankind’s existence on the planet – food security, water supply and climate change....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Hearing you loud and clear…
Plant Sensing & Communication. Richard Karban. University of Chicago Press, 2015 It is said that we have two ears and one mouth because we should listen twice as much as we talk. Well, if we listen...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Plant Science at the leading edge
In aeroplane design, the leading edge is either “the part of the wing that first contacts the air … or … the foremost edge of an airfoil section“. Plants – as one might expect – have a different take...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Altruistic plants?
There’s been a thoughtfulness* of books recently that reflect on aspects of plant intelligence – e.g. Daniel Chamovitz’s What a Plant Knows, Anthony Trewavas’ Plant Behaviour & Intelligence,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Grounds for climate change optimism?
When global warming and greenhouse gases are mentioned (and they are, seemingly endlessly, but does anybody listen? Does anybody do anything about it..?) [Ed. – Steady on, Mr C, the good people in...
View Article
