Plant Cuttings
Plant cell biology in the frame!
Notwithstanding the centuries we’ve spent peering at, poking, prodding and penetrating the inner workings of plant cells with various types of microscopes and decades undertaking
Plant Cuttings
Plants on the prowl
Plants are not noted for their dynamic lifestyles. Indeed, rooted in the soil as they tend to be, they are usually written off as little more
Plant Cuttings
Say it with… fungi?
I’ve often thought it must be great to be remembered in a scientific binomial (but, as a botanist, it has to be a suitable plant)
Plant Cuttings
Genome jealousy
Image: Richard Wheeler/Wikimedia Commons. By way of a bit of an advertisement for the news site of another science organ – and to dispel any doubts
Plant Cuttings
Hay fever: another straw to clutch at?
As the northern hemisphere’s hay fever season gets into full swing, there is encouraging news from Mother Nature’s own medicine cabinet. Hay fever – ‘seasonal
Plant Cuttings
The ultimate packed lunch?
Image: Scott Camazine/Wikimedia Commons. Heterotrophy is so time-consuming: find prey, stalk prey, catch prey, consume prey… Preying all of the day and all of
Plant Cuttings
Where have all the plants come from?
For many years it has been the considered view that land plants had evolved some 500 million years ago from stonewort-like algae, something like the
Plant Cuttings
Back to the Beginning: The Miller’s Tale
Twentieth-century scientist and modern-day Promethean Stanley Lloyd Miller was famous for his ‘spark of life’ experiments of the 1950s. In those studies he subjected
Plant Cuttings
Leeuwenhoek whine a stinker…
I’ve long had great respect and admiration for those pioneers of microscopy. Men – for such was the case in those ‘good old days’ – such as
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’