Just a note to say the March issue of Annals of Botany is now available. The March 2010 volume will available with free access to papers shortly.

Helical cell wall thickenings in Aspleniaceae Extraxylary helical cell wall thickenings (HCWTs) in vascular plants are not well documented. Leroux et al. study their occurrence and composition in the root cortex of the fern family Aspleniaceae and show that these walls are non-lignified, but are rich in cellulose, hemicelluloses and pectins. Moreover, the occurrence of [...]

We’re reworking our Facebook page, now that the new layouts are available. You could use the page as a sampler for the blog, but I’m wondering if we can do more with it. One of the things Facebook is good at is making connections, so I’d like to do that. Can you suggest any pages [...]

High-resolution proxies for wood microdensitometry Density is a crucial variable in forest and wood science, but gravimetric methods of measurement are mostly destructive and time-consuming. De Ridder et al. derive profiles of wood density variations for the African species Terminalia superba with a resolution of approx. 50 µm from resistance drillings, neutron and X-ray scans. They [...]

Image: Robert Ricker, US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Encouraging students to face their fears and take up the challenge of confronting scientific names (no longer should we call them Latin names because, although Latinized, the names themselves come from a wide variety of languages) is not easy – as anyone who has struggled with [...]