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Image: Becker & Marin (2009)

Proof of phytological principle

Sadly, we don’t have time machines that would permit us to go back and see ancient evolution in action. So we have to make do with such devices and stratagems as inference, surmise, speculation, good honest-to-goodness...

Maize (Corn) ears in China. Photo: Eloise Phipps, CIMMYT

Maize seed ‘Feed me’ gene identified

Unlike ‘Audrey 2’ – the plant which ate members of the cast from ‘The Little Shop of Horrors’ (botanically suspect but with some good songs) – the maize seed grows on the cob by extracting goodies from the...

Image: Eva Kröcher/Wikimedia Commons.

When physics meets botany…

This column is always fascinated by the way new insights arise when different disciplines are brought together to tackle an ostensibly botanical problem. So, too, is the UK’s Royal Society, hence its august organ...

Image: Wolfgang Sauber/Wikimedia Commons.

Nicotine: an ancient addiction?

It must be terribly depressing if you don’t have plants in your life to give you purpose and a reason to get up in the morning, put digit to keyboard, or whatever. Still, for those who are intellectually botanically...

Science teaching resource

Science teaching resource

Relatively new to me – so maybe new to some of my devoted legion of readers (many of whom may be involved in teaching science, plant or otherwise) and therefore worthy of sharing – is news of the Understanding Science...

Answer: Not Lamarck(!)

Answer: Not Lamarck(!)

OK, that’s the answer, what was the question? Who invented the dichotomous key for identification? Well, as anybody who has taught students about keys and their use as tools for plant ID (or even for animals if you must...