Great things are possible when disciplines that may be studied separately and distinctly are brought together. For example, and famously, when botany, zoology, bacteriology, mycology, protistology, virology, chemistry, physics, and anthropology (and maybe a few more ‘-ologies’ and non-ologies…) come together we get the new(-ish) discipline of ecology. More modestly, this item is concerned just with two sciences, botany and physics*. And its sole declared intention is to alert the readers of Plant Cuttings – who are a switched-on plant-minded bunch – to a special issue of Physics World.

Although this is a journal that may not be on their radar as far as plant-related reading goes, April 2018’s issue featured many articles that take a physics perspective on plant matters. And, because Plant Cuttings is about service to the botanical community, I’ve done the hard work for you (and it took quite a while to do…) and tracked down freely-available copies of that issue’s plant physics articles.