An Australian team has been studying how to best grow vegetables by experimenting with pak choi in urban gardens. They found that canopy cover and garden richness, rather than pollinator visits are the key factors in...
Category - Plants & People
Alun Salt
Is that an invasive alien species? Time to reach for the phone.
Smartphone apps are a tool that could help monitor, predict, and ideally prevent the spread of invasive species. But are they living up to their full potential?
Dale Maylea
From fossils to landscapes: the art of reconstructing plants in the past
How can you reconstruct the vegetation of deep time? One professor has turned to canvas and paint.
Hugh Dickinson
Can field botany be effectively taught as a distance course?
COVID-19 forced many academics to teach remotely; for field botany this required a complete rethink of how such a course could be taught.
William Salter
We won’t be retweeting some job adverts. Here’s why.
More and more people are using images to get round character limits on Twitter, but some people are getting left behind.
Resilience of crops confirms that drought alone did not cause a ‘collapse’ in Mayan civilisation
In the 800s, Mayan cities in southeastern Mexico and Central America were abandoned - just as drought hit the region. But a botanical study shows that the connection between drought and depopulation was not simple.
Most plants come from seeds. What does this mean for us?
Adult plants provide sustenance, sequester carbon and help keep healthy soils. But what is the role of seeds?
Carlos A. Ordóñez-Parra
Virtual conferences are more inclusive. Will that disappear when in-person conferences return?
COVID 19 may have prevented people from attending conferences in person, but the virtual alternatives have opened attendance to many more people.
Biodiversity in agricultural land: better in bioenergy crops
This study shows that using plant material to produce bioenergy also has a positive effect on overall biodiversity.
Caspar Donnison
Gail Taylor
How using bibliometrics can help guide people to your research, the case of the Ionome, Nutriome and Metallome
You might think of bibliometrics as something that happens to scientific articles after they’re published. However, in new and innovative fields like ionomics, bibliometrics can also help shape them.
Philip White
Estimating genetic variation in seed collections using seed morphology
Can variation in seed morphological traits allow us to estimate genetic variation in seed banks of vulnerable plant species?
Conservation strategies for the endangered Dianthus superbus in Latvia
Can a combination of in situ, ex situ and inter situ conservation strategies help the recovery of Dianthus superbus populations in Latvia?
Flora Incognita shows high identification accuracy in Northern Europe
Plant identification apps are now widely available for smartphones but can we trust them for research and nature conservation purposes?
Formal schooling reduces how well young people know the edible plants of their region
For young people in this community, stepping into a classroom might mean knowing less about their flora.
Patrick Gibson