Dancing fluorescent Golgi bodies in tobacco leaf cells, visualised with confocal laser scanning microscopy.

Phragmites australis (the common reed) is widespread though not native in many regions of the World, including North America.

Working hard on your behalf, one of my many ‘spies’ has tipped me off about a ‘super blog with phylogenies of food plants and lots of hard details on botany and foods’. Plants and food? Tell me more! Well, espousing the view that ‘a person can learn a lot about plants through the everyday acts [...]

As anyone who merely glances at the titles of scientific articles will tell you, when ‘new species’ and ‘China’ are seen together it is usually a tale of ‘yet another’ extinct missing-link fossil from that amazing country (e.g. Pascal Godefroit et al.). Well, this time I’m pleased to report new plant taxa from China that [...]

Although some way removed from the manic antics of an ambitious medic named Dr Frankenstein (the sort of Creationist who gives ‘Intelligent Design’ a bad name…) attempting to revivify a corpse with electric shocks, Kazunori Hironaka et al. have increased the levels of purported life-supporting polyphenols in sweet potato by 60% using an electric current. Polyphenols [...]

I’m happy(!) to be able to non-exclusively reveal to you that gardeners and florists (i.e. people who work with plants!) are officially the happiest workers… in the UK at least. That is the conclusion of City & Guilds – the UK’s ‘leading vocational education organisation’, which is committed to enabling people and organisations to unlock [...]

At last, The International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University and a committee of scientists have chosen some plants as being amongst their top 10 listings of new species. For too long that annual list has been a veritable ‘plant desert’. Well, I’m pleased to note that the 2012 list makes up for [...]