Ecosystems
Silence of the Llanos
Botanists are hearing an alarm call alerting the world to habitat loss in Colombia, but it’s not a noise that they hear, it’s silence caused by vanishing bird calls marking lost ecosystems.
The Week in Botany
The Week in Botany July 21, 2025
This week we have gossip from the rhizosphere, why eating melons takes a lot of aardvark, a plant that caters to different pollinators at different times, and more.
Ecosystems
What 17,000 Pressed Flowers Revealed About Arctic Climate Change
The brief Arctic summer is getting briefer. Research using herbaria shows that flowering times are shifting. Not all plants are responding the same way & that’s a problem.
Plants & People
Plant Thieves Target Everything From Gardens to Botanic Collections
Insurance data suggests plant theft is increasing, spanning local garden crime to international poaching networks threatening conservation efforts and botanic gardens.
Cells, Genes & Molecules
A rare plant with a taste for toxic soil is getting some help from unexpected allies with green fingers
Czech gardeners helped protect an endangered flower from extinction using their backyards. The simple trick could aid plant conservation worldwide.
Growth & Development
High-Speed Analysis Reveals Squirting Cucumber’s Ballistic Precision
High-speed cameras capture squirting cucumbers shooting seeds at 29 mph across 12-meter distances using perfectly angled, pressurised fruit explosions.
Plants & People
Rome’s Deadliest Botanist
The Emperor Caligula wasn’t just interested in plants as poisons, he also knew of their healing properties. It seems that he just preferred the poison side of pharmacology.
The Week in Botany
The Week in Botany July 14, 2025
This week, there’s a lot of heat with tropical plants, dead plants that lived in cooler climates and a sweet way for plants to sense heat.
Ecosystems
What Dead Plants Tell Us About Living Through Climate Change
Scientists analysing 2,000 herbarium specimens discovered jewelflowers survive new climates not by evolving, but by engineering their own familiar microenvironments
Cells, Genes & Molecules
The Surprising Way Plants Really Sense Heat
The sweet molecules plants make during photosynthesis double as sophisticated thermometers, revealing a hidden layer of plant environmental sensing.
The Week in Botany
The Week in Botany July 7, 2025
This week, nectar with colour, plants with none, how small differences foster biodiversity and small gardens that bring us together.
Plants & People
Researchers find social bonds grow in the soil of Warsaw’s gardens
Polish researchers discovered the secret to thriving urban gardens isn’t green thumbs or good soil, it’s the social networks gardeners build together.