As the wine harvest reaches its peak in the Northern Hemisphere, what are the top three grapes? Interestingly, despite the volume of wine produced globally, and the long-lived plantations / vineyards, there have been...
I'm writing an AoBBlog post (or maybe posts) on ten plants that all botanists should know quite a lot about. Criteria for inclusion include importance in the environment, importance to people as food or culturally...
What do peacocks, CDs and certain plants have in common? They all have multi-coloured parts – feathers, surfaces or petals – which change their hue depending on the angle you look at them. This physical phenomenon in...
Many phytoplankton share a common feature with their larger non-aquatic cousins, the land plants: chloroplasts. Therefore they are also united in their ability to photosynthesize and their environmental requirement of...
The vacuole is the largest organelle of a plant cell. It accumulates proteins, ions and secondary metabolites while providing turgor for cell growth via water content. It is also a major site for the degradation of...