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Botany for Halloween – Witches, Brooms and Pumpkins
At the moment, I am teaching plant hormones in our course on plant cell and developmental biology (BS1003). Fortunately, hormones and development link well with Halloween
AoB PLANTS
Free—open access paper: Evolutionary development of the plant spore and pollen wall
This article provides an overview of the development and structure of spore and pollen walls in the major plant groups and summarises progress in our understanding of the molecular genetics underpinning spore/pollen evolution and development.
Plant Cuttings
Facing the music
Plants are daily subjected to myriad biotic and abiotic factors and have to respond appropriately to them or suffer the consequences. However, one factor they’ve
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Open Access Plant Science – Every Week of the Year
You can afford to worry about medical research once you have enough food to eat.
Plant Cuttings
Latin is dead (Official!)
It’s been a feature of botany that ever since the language of Ancient Rome became the lingua franca of the educated classes, descriptions of new
annals-of-botany
Ontogeny and responses to apical damage
Plants can tolerate tissue loss through vigorous branching, often triggered by release from apical dominance and activation of lateral meristems. In the annual plant Medicago truncatula,
annals-of-botany
Progenitor–derivative speciation in orchids
Sexually deceptive Ophrys orchids attract specific pollinators, and shifts in these pollinators may drive speciation with a progenitor–derivative pattern. Schlüter et al. find evidence for
annals-of-botany
The nature of ‘bracteoles’ in Atripliceae
The tribe Atripliceae (Chenopodiaceae) has been characterized by having perianthless female flowers surrounded by two accrescent bracts/bracteoles. Flores-Olvera et al conduct a floral ontogenetic
Plant Cuttings
The voice of sanity (finally!)
How many times have you tried to understand a sentence from a scientific article only to give up thinking it was written in a foreign language?
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Reactions of Nicotiana species to inoculation with begomoviruses
The inability of begomoviruses to systemically infect several Nicotiana species is likely due to inhibition of virus movement rather than replication and provides a novel model to study virus-host interactions in resistant/susceptible hosts.
annals-of-botany
Labellar micromorphology of Zygopetalinae
Molecular evidence indicates that the orchid subtribe Zygopetalinae is sister to Maxillariinae. Davies and Stpiczyńska show that the labellar micromorphology of Zygopetalinae is less diverse than
annals-of-botany
Floral development in Anaxagorea (Annonaceae)
Anaxagorea is the phylogenetically basal-most genus in the large, tropical magnoliid family Annonaceae (custard apple). Endress and Armstrong study floral development for the first time