I was in London earlier this week for an editorial meeting with many of the Annals of Botany members. As part of it, I took my first trip to Kew. So long as you’re not thinking, you can take a pleasant stroll...
Author - Alun Salt
Alun Salt
The Ambonese Herbal revisited
The Linnean Society of London and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Science and the Society for the History of Natural History, hosted a joint symposium “Visions from the Blind Seer of Ambon – A celebration of...
Secret to Saving Money is Biodiversity
Biodiversity could be the secret to creating a successful “green roof” according to new research published in the April issue of Annals of Botany. The research, led by Scott MacIvor and Dr. Jeremy Lundholm...
What I did on my day off
I visited Biddulph Grange Garden, a National Trust Property in Staffordshire. As visits go it wasn’t a huge success. The sky was solid cloud that hammered the light flat, meaning there was no real light and shade...
Botanical Art you can wear
Botanical Art blog ArtPlantae Today has an interview with artist Carol Creech. She’s started offering her work on a t-shirt at Zazzle. The interview itself is mainly about the how art reproduces on Zazzle, but the...
A mapping tool to add to my wishlist
This tool from Gatewing looks like the kind of mapping equipment I dream about. It’s a very simple idea. You can use a groundstation to control a UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) equipped with various devices to...
What happens now to agriculture in Japan?
There’s an interesting post on Alex Tiller’s Blog on Agriculture and Farming that I missed earlier. Alex asks Will Agriculture in Japan Survive? It’s a timely question as the recent tsunami hit over...
Life Ascending by Nick Lane
There’s a tendency to look back to at earlier times as some sort of golden age. Even scientists to this despite the fact that “2011 is the most futuristic year there’s ever been” to misquote Paul...
Looking for things to like
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...
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...
