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The End of the Botany Degree in the UK
An article highlighting the continuing decline in the number of students pursuing degrees in plant science.
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Book reviews and a poll – what about ‘bad’ books?
Development of thoughts or ideas, and dissemination of techniques or methods, happens not only in the pages of Journals or on the web, but in books
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EU biodiversity strategy to 2020: Our life insurance, our natural capital
Deterioration of biodiversity jeopardises the wealth and employment we derive from nature, and endangers our wellbeing. In the EU, only 17% of habitats and species and
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An Artist of the Botanical World
In the late 18th century, the twice-widowed Mary Delany created nearly a thousand breathtakingly beautiful and intricate paper “mosaicks” of flowers.
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Bananas, disease, diversity, research and The One Show
Our favourite fruit, the banana, is threatened by fungal, viral and bacterial diseases. This was discussed on the BBC TV programme ‘The One Show’ on 13
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Presentations and purpose
Several AoBBlog.com posts have discussed presentations, because both teaching and conference talks are such an important part of what many botanists are doing – telling people
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Charles Darwin and the Origins of Plant Evolutionary Developmental Biology
I often quote the last paragraph of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species: “It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of
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Paying to read or paying for publication: what do you get?
Why not simply post your manuscript on your own or your Institute’s webserver, at minimal cost, fast and available to all? Following Annals of Botany’
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What I did on my day off
I visited Biddulph Grange Garden, a National Trust Property in Staffordshire. As visits go it wasn’t a huge success. The sky was solid cloud that
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Gene manipulation in plants – open educational resource
Genetic manipulation of crops is an issue of great current interest and controversy. This unit is part of the Open University OpenLearn project and covers some
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A mapping tool to add to my wishlist
This tool from Gatewing looks like the kind of mapping equipment I dream about. It’s a very simple idea. You can use a groundstation to
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Missing my own talk, communities, networks and journal development
Individually, as researchers and scientists, we want to read high-quality information, we want to find everything that is relevant to our interests, we want our