featured
Microplastics could pose a threat to plants
There’s been plenty of media attention on the threat plastics, especially microplastics, pose to animal life. A paper in New Phytologist suggests that there’s
annals-of-botany
Hornwort stomata walls are not built for movement
Guard cell walls are built to resist bending and deformation to open and close the pore. Pectins provide flexibility and resilience to walls; in particular arabinans
Growth & Development
A tome for the phloem: Tree Physiology’s Special Issue on Phloem
Phloem is a crucial tissue in trees, responsible for transporting carbon and cycling of nutrients throughout the plant. However, there is comparatively little information on phloem
annals-of-botany
Functional traits of vascular plants colonizing alpine cushions
Global warming threatens species living in the highest and coldest areas. Alpine cushion plants are potentially endangered by stronger species expanding from lower elevations. This can
AoB PLANTS
Characterization of a CONSTANS-Like gene induced in spaceflight
The complex networks and signalling pathways that equip plants to cope with environmental challenges in terrestrial environments developed over evolutionary time. Exposing plants to novel environments
annals-of-botany
Correlated evolution-flower size and seed number
Evolution of large flowers and associated specialized pollination mechanisms may increase the genetic relatedness of seeds within multi-ovulate ovaries by pollination of all ovules by
featured
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
annals-of-botany
Relationships between Tertiary relict and circumboreal woodland floras
Where do you find plants? Sometimes it seems the clue is in the name. For example, anyone looking for the Radnor Lily in the UK will
featured
Sex on Fire and Vachellia caven
In Central Argentina grows a tree which can produce flowers with different sexual characteristics? Why? Is there an advantage to changing your sex life if you’re a plant?
annals-of-botany
Floral micromorphology of bird-pollinated carnivorous Utricularia
Most bladderworts (genera Pinguicula, Genlisea, Utricularia, Lentibulariaceae) are pollinated by insects. Bird pollination is rare and has probably evolved independently three times in this family. In
Reviews
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…
annals-of-botany
Do I need a sexual partner, or is it better to be my own date? The evolution of sexually dimorphic plants
Enantiostyly, a reproductive system characterized by heteromorphic flowers with either left or right style deflection, compels reciprocal pollen transfer between floral types. The potential outcrossing advantage