Hello everyone. This week Sarah has been extremely busy, and the result is Paleo Week, a week of posts related to the recent Annals of Botany special issue: Role of Fossils in Reconstructing Plant Evolution. It's free access for a limited time, before some of the articles get pulled back behind the paywall.

I've been working on a couple of projects. One is a small redesign for the site to improve how we display images. This will also have a glossary as part of the system. A glossary is something that will get eaten up and plagiarised by AI, but we'll do it regardless because it'll be helpful for some of our readers. The other is looking at short TikTok style video.

I'm not over-impressed with TikTok, there's so much AI. But there are some good accounts on there. BotanyGeekOfficial and CrimePaysButBotanyDoesnt are worth a follow, but I knew that from Instagram and YouTube. However, I wasn't aware of ThisGardenWillKillYou, which is another fun account. If you have others you recommend, please drop me a message @alunsalt (not to be confused with @alun.salt, who is an entirely different person). There might be Botany One TikToks, Reels and YouTube shorts on the way, but it's definitely something for later on in the year, not now. We've done video badly in the past. This time I want to make sure we're doing it properly.

While I won't be dancing about botany in the near future, there will still be an email of stories, botanical news, conversations fromMastodon and Bluesky, as well as career postings. at the usual time next week.

Until then, take care,

Alun (webmaster@botany.one)

On Botany One

Paleo Week

• Ancient Secrets of the Fibonacci Spiral
  Longer cones and a clockwise spiral lead to tighter seed packing in a Jurassic conifer.
• Getting to the Root of Roots
  Fossils anchor root evolution to the tree of life.
• Northern Canada was Once a Subtropical Paradise
  Fossils of Eocene palm trees near the Arctic Circle reveal a heated past.
• Shining a Light on Nightshade Evolution
  Solanaceae species diversification began in the Late Cretaceous – when dinosaurs ruled the Earth.
• Research Biases Affect the Bryophyte Fossil Record
  Country level economic development and the number of grant-funded bryophyte researchers are major factors affecting fossil discovery.

The Digital Biodiversity Revolution Needs More Than Data
At Kew’s State of the World’s Plants and Fungi Symposium, digitisation promised new science, sharper conservation and faster AI. But the hardest questions were about people, power and who benefits.

The Digital Biodiversity Revolution Needs More Than Data (Part 2)
Digitising a collection is easy. Deciding who owns the knowledge inside it is the hard part.

There was also Science Shared, Sudoku Garden, Plant Hunt and Nesiota elliptica - a plant that has just stepped into the past tense - was plant of the week. And there's last week's Week in Botany too.

In AoBC Publications

• Assessment of Relative Soil Moisture during Fallow from Sentinel-1 and -2 to Support Crop Management Decisions for Sorghum in Northeastern Australia 🆓
• Variable responses to tree root exclusion by understory plant functional types in a xeric longleaf pine woodland 🆓
• Multiple defense networks in cadmium-excluding plants: from adaptive mechanisms to agricultural applications 🆓
  

News & Views

Grandes Incendios Forestales 2026 en España
Aquí podrás ver los Grandes Incendios Forestales que se hayan producido en España durante 2026
edu.forestry.es

Unlocking historical botany: new archival resources available on the BSBI website
We've just added a wealth of new resources to this website, making it a better resource for botanical research than ever before. You can now access more than 300 digitised titles - and we've also made them easier than ever for you to get hold of.
bsbi.org

Day 127: 200 Objects in 200 Days: Pod corn, 1936, Indiana
Botany professor Paul Weatherwax grew this sample of pod corn (Zea mays var. tunicata) in 1936 at the University of Indiana as part of his research on the origins of domesticated corn.
lsa.umich.edu

Cambridge and Oxford join forces to unlock over a million biological records for climate research
The University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford will lead a major new partnership to digitise over 1.1 million natural history specimens, creating a step-change in how researchers and conservationists access vital biodiversity data.
plantsci.cam.ac.uk

In Early Cretaceous Forests: There's Mushroom for Fossils
Discover the latest news from The Linnean Society of London.
linnean.org

Gilbert White: the modern naturalist
This pioneering English naturalist and author of The Natural History of Selborne transformed the way we look at the natural world and influenced Charles Darwin, among many others.
nhm.ac.uk

AI in scientific publishing: Slower, worse, and more expensive
Science is not convinced that LLMs are making everything better.
Science

Boise botanist IDed a new plant in the Foothills. Wildfire likely burned much of it
The Claremont Fire in the Boise Foothills had scorched 6,800 acres of terrain by Tuesday afternoon, torching sagebrush and shrubs, wildflowers and weeds, and narrowly avoiding homes. One thing it has almost certainly burned is a vast portion of a newly recognized plant species endemic to the Foothills, according to Barbara Ertter, a self-described “quasi-retired botanist” and research associate at Boise State University and the College of Idaho.
Idaho Statesman

The Debate Over Pictures in Science
Botanical illustrations helped bring science to new audiences—but not every scientist welcomed the change.
JSTOR Daily

Striking image shows ambitious new botanic garden planned for Leeds
A new botanic garden could boost scientific study and create a visitor attraction at the city’s main university. (recommend to visit with an ad blocker)
Yorkshire Evening Post

Why are forests vanishing in southeastern Liberia?
In the past century, most of West Africa’s Upper Guinean rainforest has been lost to commercial agriculture, infrastructure development and logging. More than half of what’s left is in Liberia, and the remaining rainforest now faces a threat that’s already driven much of the region’s deforestation: cacao production.
Mongabay

Science Shared

Three botany papers widely shared on Bluesky this past week were:

1. There is No Consensus on Biological Sex
Eppley, M. G. et al. · Ecology Letters · 1 post · 45 likes · 19 reposts on Bluesky

There is ongoing scientific and societal discourse on the definition of biological sex. At this critical moment when misinformation about sex is being applied to policy globally, scientific clarification is valuable. Here, we evaluate the primary approaches to defining sex and synthesise the active discourse to conclude that there is no current consensus on a definition of sex that is free of assumptions and limitations. While there is no current consensus, we do not advocate for a single definition and contend that a lack of unanimity is not inherently problematic. No matter what definitional choices are used, we provide actionable recommendations to improve accuracy when describing sex. Most importantly, regardless of scientific debates, no biological definition of sex should be used to dictate human rights.

2. Optimizing biodiversity offsetting for habitat succession and colonization dynamics
Wells, K. et al. · Conservation Biology · 1 post · 29 likes · 17 reposts on Bluesky

Biodiversity offsetting aims to compensate for ecological losses from development through conservation and restoration. However, its long‐term outcomes under repeated impact–offset cycles remain uncertain. Using a conceptual forest succession model, we evaluated how offset outcomes are affected by interactions among compensation scale, duration of protection, habitat conversion rate, and land availability constraints. Additionally, we considered that these outcomes may differ across biodiversity components, including habitat maturity associated with successional habitat‐forming species and metapopulation dynamics of persistent colonizers and successional specialists.

James Bullock @jmbecologist.bsky.social · on Bluesky

Offsetting is widely promoted but poorly founded in ecology

Our modelling study shows:

effective offsetting requires restored areas larger than those impacted

& protection over long timescales

high habitat conversion rates reduce offsetting success

conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

View on Bluesky →

3. Computational design of de novo integrated domains enables rational control of pathogen effector recognition in plant NLR immune receptors.
Xi, Y. et al. · bioRxiv · 1 post · 28 likes · 16 reposts on Bluesky

Here, we describe a programmable framework that leverages generative AI protein design tools, RFdiffusion and ProteinMPNN, to design de novo integrated domains (IDs) against diverse pathogen effectors. By integrating these bespoke binders into the modular rice blast Pik-1/Pik-2 NLR receptor chassis, we successfully engineer recognition of a non-cognate virulence factor (effector) from the Panama disease pathogen, Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cubense Tropical Race 4.

You can see the full list with more details at Science Shared: July 18.

Careers on Bluesky

Please note these are not jobs I am offering. Nor can I help you with any visa requirements. At time of writing there are around 96 other jobs posted at Botany One.

Cover Image: Ignacio Escapa & Mihai Tomescu. The picture shows a portion of the frond of the Permian marattialean fern Floratheca apokalyptika with fertile pinnules bearing synangia in two files. The fossil comes from the Rio Genoa Formation in Argentinian Patagonia.