Botany

If you have a sense of adventure and know your squills from your spurges, Cambridge University Botanic Garden may have the job for you

Experience the marvel that is night-blooming tobacco

In a new study, physicists from the United States and Israel may have gotten to the bottom of a quirky behavior of growing plants—and a mystery that intrigued Charles Darwin himself during the later decades of his life.

Thorns – technically termed prickles – are a common feature on many drastically different plants. They represent an evolutionary puzzle.

The plants are fixed to the soil by their roots. They must therefore necessarily be able to adapt to their environment. How do they do it?

In an article published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at the University of São Paulo's Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture (ESALQ-USP) in Brazil describe for the first time how strigolactones, plant hormones discovered several decades ago, control flo...

Scientific designations containing a racial slur will be altered — the first time that any species names have been adjusted because of the offence they cause.

Researchers at an international meeting will also consider how to monitor names that have problematic roots.

In a pivotal advancement for fruit agriculture, scientists have pinpointed a gene mutation in peach trees that governs the timing of flowering, a trait critical for evading spring frosts. This genetic insight could transform breeding practices, enabling the development of late-flowering fruit variet...

Plants are made up of very rigid cells. Much like bricks in a wall, this feature gives them the structural support to maintain their shape and to stand upright against gravity. However, just like any living organism, plants can be injured, for instance, by wind or animal grazing. While humans and an...

A mutant seedling revealed how plant tissues scatter incoming light, allowing plants to sense its direction and move toward it.

Zombie leaves? A species of tree fern found only in Panama reanimates its own dead leaf fronds, converting them into root structures that feed the mother plant. @LASillinois @DallingJim

Become an evolutionary detective to find the Mystery Plant!

Mechanisms underlying changes in inflorescence development in response to high ambient temperature remain unclear. Here, the authors report the cloning of the MIB2, encoding a homology of SPATULA, and its activation of CONSTANS-Like1 for determining tomato inflorescence branching at high ambient tem...

They sense the buzzing sounds of pollinators, the vibrations of the wind.

Plant biologists report that a species of tree fern found only in Panama reanimates its own dead leaf fronds, converting them into root structures that feed the mother plant. The fern, Cyathea rojasiana, reconfigures these 'zombie leaves,' reversing the flow of water to draw nutrients back into the ...

Carnivorous plants like the Venus flytrap capture prey, and minds, with their deadly allure.

There’s drama in the plant world — and a shape-shifting vine is at the center of it.

French wild pansies are producing smaller flowers and less nectar than 20 to 30 years ago in ‘startling’ act of evolution, study shows

How do citizen scientists compare with digitised herbarium data? A question asked by one of the papers we shared on social media over the past day.

Bebilderte Ausstellung zur Entstehungsgeschichte der Pflanzen - vom Beginn des Lebens in den Ozeanen, zur Eroberung des Landes über die atemberaubende neue Vielfalt der Pflanzen bis hin zu uns Menschen und den dramatischen Auswirkungen des Klimawandels heute.

Take a break from your screen and look at plants − botanizing is a great way to engage with life around you When you hear about the abundance of life on Earth, what do you picture? For many people, it’s animals – but awareness of plant diversity is growing rapidly. By Jacob S. Suissa & Ben...

Two years after Michigan State University plant scientists met at an undisclosed area on campus to dig up a bottle containing seeds buried more than 144 years ago by MSU botanist William J. Beal, molecular genetic testing has confirmed a hybrid plant was accidentally included among the seeds in the ...

Orchids were Darwin’s “abominable mystery.” They continue to elude science—and efforts to save them.

If you happen to come across plants of the Balanophoraceae family in a corner of a forest, you might easily mistake them for fungi growing around tree roots. Their mushroom-like structures are actually inflorescences, composed of minute flowers.

Curious two-volume illustrated book on bonsai which dispensed not only with the vessels but with the trees themselves.

Sometimes they produce it, too

The Artichoke Blossom, an Exploding Castle By Sam Stoeltje Sign up for our monthly newsletter! In June, I crossed the Atlantic with my partner for a much-needed vacation. A leg of the trip brought us to Avignon, in southern France, where in the fourteenth century, due to the fluctuations of religiou...