The Week in Botany September 21, 2026

It's the last week that I'll remind you that deadline for the Chief Editor position for in silico Plants is approaching. The closing date is September 24, 2026.

I had a bit of a shock this week. The neighbours have replaced the fence between our gardens. The new one is a lot taller, and has necessitated cutting down some shrubs pollinators liked on their side. I'm now unexpectedly looking for some plants to reduce the industrial estate aesthetic, and give next year's insects somewhere to call home. It means Andressa's article this week on pollinators in urban gardens is unusually timely for me. Autumn has definitely arrived here, so I'll be looking for some cheap plants.

Next week, there will be another email sharing what we've posted as well as the stories you're sharing on Mastodon and Bluesky, and career postings at the usual time next week.

Until then, take care,

Alun (webmaster@botany.one)

On Botany One

What Draws Pollinators to City Gardens?
Study reveals the factors shaping pollinator visits to city gardens.

Seeds in storage aren't quite the same as seeds in the wild
Seeds kept in storage for years turned out different from fresh ones taken from the same wild populations, showing why seed backups are so useful.

Julien L. Bota: Uncovering the Hidden Relationships That Shape Plant Communities
Botany One interviews Julien L. Bota, a plant and landscape ecologist fascinated by the surprising relationships connecting plants with animals, microbes and their environments.

Plant-Microbe Speed Dating Paves The Way For Sustainable Agriculture
Researchers have teamed up with Belgian citizens to conduct a mass match-making experiment between cold-tolerant soybeans and rhizobia.

An Unusual Plant and Its Even More Unusual Dispersers
Land hermit crabs and cockroaches may help disperse the seeds of Balanophora fungosa, adding another surprising twist to the unusual ecology of these parasitic plants.

There was also Science Shared, Sudoku Garden went to an Alpine pass, and Phytolacca americana: Pokeweed was plant of the week. You can also see last week's Week in Botany too.

In AoBC Publications

• Coordinated whole-plant responses involving tension wood formation in the hypocotyl base and directional reorientation of adventitious roots contributes to plant axis straightening in directionally displaced Avicennia marina (Forssk.) Vierh. seedlings 💰
  

News & Views

Can floating wetlands be used to cut emissions?
Researchers believe a floating garden of native Australian plants on a wastewater lagoon in Victoria's east could help tackle greenhouse gas emissions, after it cut the lagoon's emissions by about 30 percent.
rnz.co.nz

Quebec town recognizes trees as living beings with rights | CBC News
A small town west of Montreal has decided to officially recognize trees as living beings with rights of their own, in what an environmental organization describes as a first in Quebec and Canada.
cbc.ca

UH Associate Professor Martin Nuñez Explores Why Some Trees Grow Much Faster Outside Their Native Ranges
New study published in “Nature” and EU-funded group highlight how non-native pines outgrow native forest ranges.
uh.edu

Tourbières et lacs du Cézallier et de l’Artense, France’s newest Wetland of International Importance
France has named Tourbières et lacs du Cézallier et de l’Artense as its 58th Wetland of International Importance. This “Ramsar Site” (no. 2600 on the “Ramsar List”) comprises a network of natural mid-mountain volcanic and glacial lakes and peatlands of high ecological value.
ramsar.org

In Memoriam: Meng Chen, Professor of Botany and Plant Sciences
It is with profound sadness that we mourn the sudden and unexpected passing of our colleague and friend, Professor Meng Chen, on September 10, 2026.
cnas.ucr.edu

Sex without the shuffle – a plant that breaks the rules of inheritance
An international team led by André Marques at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne has shown that the Brazilian beak-sedge Rhynchospora tenuis reproduces sexually - producing pollen, fertilising its egg cells and sets seeds - but has completely lost the reshuffling of DNA between the chromosomes from each parent.
mpipz.mpg.de

Plant People For the Win! A Conversation with Chris Martine - A Botanical Podcast
Join us "in the weeds" for this fascinating conversation with Chris Martine, a Professor at Bucknell (and incoming President of BSA), who has many interests and talents, as well as an infectious enthusiasm for plants and the people who study them.
buzzsprout.com

Fake figs, fooled wasps, and another extraordinary Apocynaceae pollination system
One of the things I love about working on the milkweed and dogbane family (Apocynaceae) is that it has an apparently inexhaustible capacity to produce strange and wonderful interactions with animals. Just when you think that the family’s pollination biology has yielded most of its surprises, along comes something like this.
jeffollerton.co.uk

The hidden age of a Cerrado plant
In 2016, our research group started investigating the plants that resprouted after Pinus plantations were removed from areas that originally supported open Cerrado vegetation. These plantations had occupied the sites for up to four decades before restoration efforts began. During this work, we began asking ourselves: when a Cerrado plant reappears after decades beneath a Pinus plantation, could it actually be a survivor from the vegetation that existed there before?
plantlifebelowground.wordpress.com

'Absolute cracker looking' flower explodes in 'super bloom' across outback
A perfect storm of weather conditions has seen South Australia's north erupt into a sea of colour with a super bloom of Sturt's desert peas.
abc.net.au

Science Shared

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

1. phyB photobodies display molecular memory, regulating light signaling transcriptional states through phase separation
Igiebor, F. et al. · bioRxiv · 1 post · 73 likes · 29 reposts on Bluesky

Here, we hypothesize that the formation of phyB photobodies and the associated sequestration of signaling molecules allows for the formation of cell-type specific memory about light conditions.

2. Sex without crossovers mimics clonal reproduction in Rhynchospora tenuis
Zhang, M. et al. · Nature · 1 post · 139 likes · 59 reposts on Bluesky

Meiotic recombination ensures accurate chromosome segregation and promotes genetic diversity by generating crossovers between homologous chromosomes. We propose that recombination loss, a low chromosome number, inverted meiosis and selection for compatible gamete combinations together enable faithful segregation and clonal-like inheritance despite sexual reproduction. These findings blur the boundary between sex and clonality, linking genome architecture, recombination loss and transmission bias.

3. Soft Tissue Preservation of Silicified Melastomataceae Fruits Buried by Intraplate Volcanism in the Early Oligocene Capella Flora, Eastern Australia 💰
Koontz et al. · International Journal of Plant Sciences· 10 posts · 26 likes · 12 reposts on Bluesky

Permineralized, pentalocular fruits with soft tissue preservation from a silcrete flora in central Queensland, Australia, are referred to the Melastomataceae Juss. (Myrtales)—a very large tropical and subtropical family with no prior fossil record in eastern Gondwana.

International Journal of Plant Sciences @ijpsjournal.bsky.social · on Bluesky

In the September 2026 @ijpsjournal.bsky.social

🚨Undergraduate research🚨

Soft Tissue Preservation of Silicified Melastomataceae Fruits Buried by Intraplate Volcanism in the Early Oligocene Capella Flora, Australia

AC Rozefelds et al

www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....

#PlantScience

View on Bluesky →

You can see the full list with more details at Science Shared: September 19.

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 70 other jobs posted at Botany One.

Cover Image: Bota looking at some giant sunflowers. Photo by Theo Fiedler.