As a confirmed botanophile, I neither need to be told nor reminded that trees – and plants more generally – make one happy. But I also acknowledge that there are people who might not agree with that notion. So, for...
Tag - nature
Nigel Chaffey
What do you know about leaves???
Nature’s Fabric: Leaves in Science and Culture by David Lee, 2017. University of Chicago Press. Ever so occasionally one comes across a book that makes one think, “That’s the book I’d like to have written”. Well...
MPs fiddle with Nature…
Were UK MPs wrong for employing gardener to remove autumn leaves by hand from lime trees in New Palace Yard?
New plant journal
It just had to happen, but we didn’t know it would take nearly 150 years to come to fruition. And fruition is an apt word because the creation of a new botanical journal has recently been announced by the publishers...
Sugar versus Auxin: which is dominant?
Of the plethora of aspects of plant growth and development that the hormone (OK, plant growth regulator…) auxin is implicated in/involved with (e.g. embryo development, leaf formation, phototropism, gravitropism, fruit...
Dodgy photos dog phytology
The normally genteel world of botanical research has been shaken, stirred and shocked to its very core by a retraction of a paper.
Temperature: getting it right
Have we been measuring temperature incorrectly all along?
Giant organisms, giant genomes…
Humans are 98% junk! But a carnivorous plant is far more efficient - containing only 3% junk-DNA.
A bit of warmth and we all go bananas!?
In a warming world, could bananas really replace potatoes?
Bryophyte ‘sperminator’…
Co-opting animals to help with pollination is a major event in flower (angiosperm) biology – and is very much a do-or-die act. But have you ever considered that a similar role might be performed by animals in the case...
COR, nice one, Mr Microbe!
Although open stomata are necessary for plants to take up CO2 for photosynthesis, this also permits loss of precious water – by transpiration, the so-called necessary evil of photosynthesis. But, surely, nothing worse...
That sinking feeling…
Whilst forests – aided and abetted by cryptogams (see my previous post) – have a major role as biotic carbon sinks on land, in the oceans that role is largely down to the activity of cryptogamous phytoplankton, which...
Cryptic contribution to N (and C) cycles
In this global-climate-change-obsessed world we frequently hear the term carbon sink, which is a ‘natural or artificial reservoir that accumulates and stores some carbon-containing chemical compound for an indefinite...
Transient VENUS
This year’s transit of Venus reminds me – albeit belatedly – to applaud the hard-working botanists of the Universities of Nottingham (UK), Ghent (Belgium), Leeds (UK) and Lyon (France) who have been exploring a more...
