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Plant names, alchemy and Alchemilla
Plant names often have an interesting history behind them: I came across Alchemilla while looking up a plant I photographed at the weekend. Thinking about the
Plant Cuttings
Pharmacopoeia Shakespeariensis
Continuing the ethnobotanical theme of previous posts, another great source of information regarding folk uses of plants is the writings of the Bard of Avon, England’
annals-of-botany
Extreme phenotypic variation and fitness in lichens
Phenotypic variability is a successful strategy in lichens for colonizing different habitats. Pérez-Ortega et al. study the extreme phenotypic modifications shown by vagrant populations of
annals-of-botany
Heterodichogamy avoids inbreeding in Kingdonia
Heterodichogamy, an unusual kind of reproductive heteromorphy, is hitherto unreported in Ranunculales and is known from only one other genus in the basal eudicots. Wang et
annals-of-botany
Costs of reproduction in a gynodioecious species
In gynodioecious species hermaphroditic plants coexist with female plants. Toivonen and Mutikainen find that experimentally increased reproductive output leads to differential costs of reproduction in the
AoB PLANTS
Phenotypic traits of Phragmites australis clones
Phragmites australis is a wetland grass with high genetic variability, augmented by its cosmopolitan distribution, clonal growth form and large variation in chromosome numbers. Different ploidy
Uncategorized
August Image: Apple Stigma
This month the inset cover image shows a detail of the stigma of a flower of apple, Malus × domestica. The acquisition of stigmatic receptivity is concomitant with secretion of arabinogalactan proteins (AGPs, strained green) into the intercellular spaces between cell walls (blue).
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Suburbs and sustainability: Unlocking the greyfields to inhibit urban sprawl from Peter Newton
See on Scoop.it – AnnBot In the face of sustained population growth, our big cities continue to sprawl into the greenfields, despite the now well recognised
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Connecting you with plant scientists on Google+
We’re adding a couple of things for Google+ users from our page. They both tackle a problem that particularly affects new users, that Google+ can
annals-of-botany
Variable seed dormancy and germination in Hibbertia
Several ecologically important plant families in Mediterranean biomes have seeds with morphophysiological dormancy. Hidayati et al. study four species of the intractably dormant Australian genus Hibbertia
annals-of-botany
Mistletoes and mutant albino shoots as nutrient traps
Potassium, sulphur and zinc contents of mistletoe leaves are generally higher than in their hosts because elements that are cycled between xylem and phloem in the
AoB PLANTS
Effect of external stress on density and size of glandular trichomes in full-grown Artemisia annua, the source of anti-malarial artemisinin
Glandular trichomes (GT) on Artemisia annua produce and store the anti-malarial compound artemisinin (AN) and other secondary metabolites (SM) that have several pharmaceutical and industrial