I’m writing an AoBBlog post (or maybe posts) on ten plants that all botanists should know quite a lot about. Criteria for inclusion include importance in the environment, importance to people as food or culturally, scientific interest, global nature, and evolutionary position. What are your suggestions?

What do peacocks, CDs and certain plants have in common? They all have multi-coloured parts – feathers, surfaces or petals – which change their hue depending on the angle you look at them. This physical phenomenon in which an ordered repeating surface structure rather than a pigment gives an object its colour is called iridescence. [...]

Many phytoplankton share a common feature with their larger non-aquatic cousins, the land plants: chloroplasts. Therefore they are also united in their ability to photosynthesize and their environmental requirement of sunlight. Phytoplankton occupy the surface waters of our oceans where sunlight can penetrate. They account for more photosynthesis, carbon dioxide fixation and oxygen production than [...]

The vacuole is the largest organelle of a plant cell. It accumulates proteins, ions and secondary metabolites while providing turgor for cell growth via water content. It is also a major site for the degradation of macromolecules. A full understanding of the vacuole’s roles in salt and metal ion accumulation and water uptake are hot [...]