We’re reworking our Facebook page, now that the new layouts are available. You could use the page as a sampler for the blog, but I’m wondering if we can do more with it. One of the things Facebook is good at...
Author - Alun Salt
Alun Salt
Berry Go Round 36 is live
Catch up on plant blogging from the last month at Seeds Aside, where the latest edition of Berry Go Round is up.
An orchid that persuades wasps to date outside their species
Margaret Moran at My Growing Passion has put up a photo of Cryptostylis subulata the Large Tongue Orchid that she has growing in her garden. Her post includes an explanation of how it reproduces. It relies on wasps to...
The Scientist Gardener on Innovation versus Investment
There’s a good post by the Scientist Gardener on Investing in Innovation. It’s a response to James (who has Giant Corn) who commented on Research Funding in a post that I would have linked to at the time if...
Is the earliest wine getting earlier and earlier?
There’s been a rash of stories about how new grape varieties will be needed to fight disease if wineries are to keep flowing. As far as I can tell, because I haven’t seen anyone link to the paper, it’s...
What should link to where?
I’ve linked to stories from two sites recently. As well as the blog posts, something else happens to them when they reach the RSS feed, Facebook and Twitter accounts; the headlines shouldn’t link to the blog...
Are radishes the perfect astronauts?
A common question is if you were to leave a spaceship without a spacesuit, what kill you? Would you boil in the lack of pressure, freeze, explode, asphyxiate or what? How long could you survive before death? A story...
Life in a place of death? Pitcher plants as habitat
It shouldn’t be a surprise that there are things living in guts. Whenever I turn on ITV there’s an advert for yoghurt with Yummy Tummy Bacteria. Apart from microbes, there can be relatively complex...
Pandas don’t like shiny new forests
If you’re looking to conserve Pandas in the wild then it’s best if the forest you’re keeping them in has never been logged. I Zhang et al. writing in Biology Letters state “[I]t is no surprise...
AoB Blog puts on its winter clothes
As well as changing the header image an background stripes, I’ve taken the opportunity to redo the theme. I’ve changed it round pull out the Content Snapshots. It means there’s more space on the front...
Origins of maize unearthed
I remember being taught about the origins of cultivated maize on my MPhil. It was a mess. Over at the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog, there’s news about why the results were so messy. It turns out cultivated...
Reading about Readability
Bora Zivkovic highlighted a post on readability and blogging yesterday on The Science of Blogging. This is a rework of a post on Colin Schultz’s site from earlier in the month, which is well worth a visit because...
January Sales open on English forests
Via Tom Goskar comes news that the UK government has announced the next plan to reduce the deficit. It is to sell the English forests. Every single state-owned tree is for sale, around 18% of the forests in England...
More on Astrobotany from the Phytophactor
Following up his helpful comments on alien botany, the Phytophactor has more commentary on why plants on Earth are green.
