Plants on Earth being productive at some point in their life cycles is critical for their – and our lives. Productivity is also a common new year’s resolution for humans. Productivity in plants means photosynthesis...
Tag - Trees
Ian Street
Moths go batty
By way of introducing some mirth* to the otherwise rather doom-and-gloom-laden previous news item (A heart(wood)-warming tale of methanogens), this zoo-centric tree-based story caught my eye. Andrei Sourakov (of the...
Nigel Chaffey
The War Between Trees and Grasses by Howard Thomas: The Book I wished I’d had as an Undergraduate.
What drives the author to spend time on the piano to re-establish calm or why did the song The Teddy Bears’ Picnic leave an unsettling feeling as a child? These comments are just some of the fascinating thoughts which...
Laura Crook
80 wonderful trees and their stories
Around the World in 80 Trees by Jonathan Drori 2018. Laurence King Publishing Ltd. Stephen Barstow did it with plants, Dan Cruikshank did it with man-made ‘treasures’, and now Jonathan Drori’s done it with trees. Done...
Trees and Wellbeing Conference at Oxford Brookes University, 18 May 2018
This conference brought together recent research and ancient wisdom to discuss the beneficial effects of trees on human wellbeing and happiness. It was organized by Christiana Payne, Professor of History of Art at...
Christina Payne
Let’s go down to the forest … to bathe!
Forest Bathing: How Trees Can Help You Find Health and Happiness by Qing Li, Viking, 2018 If you go down to the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise… * No, this blog item is nothing to do with a Teddy bears’...
A life of trees sometimes hidden by lush verdant text
The review might have appeared a lot faster, if there wasn’t a problem with the language in Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees. The book is a popularisation of the Wood-Wide Web, the idea that trees...
Alun Salt
Can Trees Track the Air that You Breathe?
A new paper in PLOS One says trees outside your house can act as sentinels tracking the concentrations of potentially hazardous chemicals in your home's air.
What makes New Caledonian rainforests so different?
Rainforests in the Southwest Pacific can be highly diverse, even on a global scale, displaying higher species richness than African rainforests.
botanyone
Snails living the high life
Nigel Chaffey finds a seasonal epiphyte with a head for heights.
Botanical Interest in ‘No Such Thing as a Fish’
One of my favorite podcasts is ‘No Such Thing as a Fish‘ (NSTaaF) from the QI elves (writers). Each week, the four co-hosts bring a fact they present to the others and discuss. In Episode 167, “No Such...
Bigging-up wood work
Secondary Xylem Biology: Origins, Functions, and Applications. Edited by Yoon Soo Kim, Ryo Funada and Adya Singh. Academic Press, 2016. We don’t get that many books dealing specifically with secondary xylem [wood]...
Using dormant twigs to investigate climate change (Viewpoint)
Climate change has altered the spring phenology of many temperate plants, with important ecological consequences. However, studies of phenological shifts are generally restricted to field observations or remote-sensing...
Leaf senescence varies widely across species and sites
Climate change is altering leaf senescence phenology but variation in the phenology of leaf senescence among species & locations is still poorly understood.
