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Wood-wide web wins world-renowned writing award
The Overstory by Richard Powers, 2018. William Heinemann. As a would-be botanical educator who’s reviewed a lot of botany texts over the years, I
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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
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All good things come to an end…
This Cuttings collection is the last that will appear in the Annals of Botany journal. Since the column was launched on an unsuspecting world in January
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Saluting those who suffer for science
What is the most important part of a scientific paper? Arguably, it’s the Results section– although there are those who might propose that it’s
Plant Cuttings
Science communication: Getting it right…
Science is one of the most important of human activities, and consequently it’s often funded by the public via their taxes. In order to inform
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A tropical botany delight
Atlas of Poetic Botany by Francis Hallé with Éliane Patriarca, translated by Erik Butler, 2018. The MIT Press. Let’s start this book appreciation with a
Plant Cuttings
Check beneath your boots…
When people mention plant blindness* they tend to focus on the ‘lack of appreciation of the role of plants in the world’ notion. That is important,
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Top-up, and bottom-down effects of marine plankton
Members of the plankton are so-called because they don’t have the ability to move against modest currents in the water bodies they inhabit, i.
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Houseplants as human health monitors
Plants provide humans with many products and services that are not only important but essential to our existence. We don’t have space to catalogue all
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Bigging-up Bill’s botany
Mr Guilfoyle’s Shakespearian Botany, Edited by Diana E Hill and Edmée Cudmore, 2018. The Miegunyah Press. It is acknowledged that English wordsmith William Shakespeare (Bill…
Plant Cuttings
Man’s best friend now plant’s best friend too?
For thousands of years, dogs (domesticated descendants of wolves) have been considered to be man’s best friend. One of the ways that friendship has been
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Tanks, Zika and ornamental plants
The plant group known as bromeliads famously includes the commercially important pineapple. However, that ground-growing member of the Bromeliaceae (the more formal name for the