Plant Cuttings
It’s not what you know, but who you know!
Whilst humankind often debates the benefits – or otherwise – of an individual’s advancement based on patronage rather than merit, it is interesting to note that the
Plant Cuttings
Darwin reviews reviewed
Image: portrait of the 31-year-old Charles Darwin by George Richmond, 1840. If – apparently like me – you nodded off a little during 2009’s Darwin
Plant Cuttings
Crock o’ gold in Crocosphaera?
Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Enzymes are essential to life as we understand it on Earth. But once they’ve participated in whatever reactions they’
Plant Cuttings
The lingua franca of taxonomy
Image: Robert Ricker, US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Encouraging students to face their fears and take up the challenge of confronting scientific names (no longer
Plant Cuttings
Come back, Paul. All is forgiven
Image: Paul the Octopus, Wikimedia Commons. Sadly, Paul – the ‘fortune-telling octopus’ – is no more, but since his exploits during football’s World Cup last summer,
Plant Cuttings
Cheers, mate!
Wikipebeer Image: Wikimedia Commons. A few years ago ‘-omics’ were all the rage in biology: metabolomics, genomics, transcriptomics, etc. And for traditional [a euphemism for old-
Plant Cuttings
Why cannabis is bad for you…
Image: Wikimedia Commons, based on data from: Gable RS. 2006. In: Fish M. ed. Drugs and Society: US Public Policy. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 149–162.
Plant Cuttings
…and why aspirin is good for you
Image: L’Illustration, December 1923/Wikimedia Commons. Aspirin, one of the most famous plant-derived medicines, is often used as an analgesic (to relieve minor aches
Plant Cuttings
Rice
Image: Katsushika Hokusai, Watermill at Onden (1826–1833). Rice, or strictly speaking the hulls, has been proposed as a substitute for perlite – itself a substitute for
Plant Cuttings
Bark I
Image: Micael Maggs, Wikimedia Commons. As we try to draw a veil over some aspects of 2010 there are still ripples surrounding the headline-grabbing oil
Plant Cuttings
Pineapple
Image: Wikimedia Commons. Cotton, a soft, fluffy staple fibre that grows in a protective capsule around seeds of plants of the genus Gossypium, is converted into
Plant Cuttings
Bark II
Nanotechnology, the study of manipulating matter on an atomic and molecular scale, and generally dealing with structures of 1–10 nm is one of the more