Tree story: The history of the world written in rings, by Valerie Trouet 2020. Johns Hopkins University Press What links the following: That (in)famous ‘hockey stick graph’ which showed that Earth’s temperature...
Tag - plant anatomy
Nigel Chaffey
Teaching plant anatomy, via hangman?
Plant Anatomy: A Concept-Based Approach to the Structure of Seed Plants by Richard Crang, Sheila Lyons-Sobaski and Robert Wise, 2018. Springer. I suspect that anybody who’s ever taught – or studied – plant anatomy has...
Roots create … rock
The more I learn about roots, the more amazing they appear. Not only do they provide essential support for, and anchorage of, the aerial, above-ground, parts of the plant, they are the prime organs for abstracting water...
Dragons, coconuts and skyscrapers…
Botanists aren't always genetic engineers. This week Nigel Chaffey finds some have branched out into civil engineering.
Histopathology of the whip-shaped sorus in sugarcane
Sugarcane smut is a fungal disease caused by Sporisorium scitamineum, which is responsible for losses in sugarcane production worldwide. Infected plants show a profound metabolic modification resulting in the...
botanyone
The 21st century Prometheus
The full title of Mary Shelley’s acclaimed 1818 novel “Frankenstein” is “Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus”. Well, fictional frightening-fellow fabricator Dr Frankenstein may have been the modern Prometheus of his...
Weed anatomy in the spotlight
Weed Anatomy. Hansjoerg Kraehmer and Peter Baur. Wiley-Blackwell, 2013 As an old-fashioned botanist who loves few things more than investigating plant structure-and-function (or just plant structure!) I’ve been trying...
Can’t see the tissues for the tetrapyrroles?
How can you view plant tissues without slipping them a mickey?
Focus on transfer cells
A study finds that manipulation of transfer cells may provide new opportunities for improving crop yield.
Collenchyma: past, present and future (Invited Review)
Collenchyma has remained in the shadow of commercially exploited mechanical tissues such as wood and fibres, and consequently has received relatively little attention since it was first described. However, collenchyma...
Cadmium and hypodermal periderm formation in roots
Cadmium and hypodermal periderm formation in roots Periderm as a result of secondary meristem activity is not usually formed in monocot species. Lux et al. describe periclinal cell division in the hypodermal layer of...
