Making Eden by David Beerling, 2019. Oxford University Press. Almost 12 years ago I reviewed David Beerling’s previous book The Emerald Planet. I was very impressed with that slim, but information-packed, volume; I’m...
Tag - land flora
Nigel Chaffey
How fungi oxygenated the Earth
Now that’s an eye-catching headline, isn’t it? The thought of mushrooms and toadstools – that famously don’t produce oxygen, unlike green plants with their oxygenic photosynthesis – adding oxygen to the planet’s...
Desert plants, got ’em covered…
This week Nigel turns his dry wit on desert plants, and finds a cuticle full of charm.
Nature Plants: an appreciation [or, Now we are Three…*]
A review of 'Nature Plants', the latest offering from the Nature Publishing Group.
Because they’re not red(!)
Although red algae contain green chlorophyll, their red coloration is a result of large amounts of non-green pigments such as phycoerythrin.
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...
Rocks versus Clocks
What happened 670 million years ago? Can’t remember? Doesn’t matter, that’s why we have palaeobotanists. Palaeobotanists that is whose science it seems has been much under-appreciated amidst the high expectations, hope...
Where have all the plants come from?
For many years it has been the considered view that land plants had evolved some 500 million years ago from stonewort-like algae, something like the extant genus Chara. In a timely re-evaluation of this notion, Sabina...
