“It’s the equivalent of finding a Tyrannosaurus rex in your back yard,” said Jimmy Turner, Director of Horticultural Research at Dallas Arboretum. His words echoed those of . It’s either a triumph of marketing or a millstone round the neck of botanists who think the Wollemi Pine should have a place in the Anthropocene as well as the Jurassic era.

In a recent paper (Annals of Botany 107: 909–916; 2011) Tomlinson and Huggett indicated that reiterative branches in the pine Wollemi nobilis develop from groups of seemingly differentiated cells in axillary positions, not from ‘axillary meristems’, i.e. cells that retain a meristematic appearance. Burrows contends that previously published information indicates that axillary meristems are present in both main stem and [...]

I was in London earlier this week for an editorial meeting with many of the Annals of Botany members. As part of it, I took my first trip to Kew. So long as you’re not thinking, you can take a pleasant stroll around the gardens in two or three hours. There’s some nice shaded paths [...]