A common complaint of food, for many reasons, is that it ‘tastes like sawdust’. Although that description is subjective – the food doesn’t contain sawdust even if its taste may suggest otherwise,* there may be more than a grain of truth in it in the near future, if Luke’s dream comes to pass. Who is […]

It's not just microbes that can live under extreme conditions. Some plants thrive in situations many other life forms simply could not tolerate.

Rather belatedly in our look at animals and seed dispersal, we have our Darwin connection (after all, what biological item would be complete without mention of that venerable Victorian vegephile, Charles Darwin?). If your habitat is devoid of elephants or chimpanzees (see parts 2 and 3 of this series), what other animals could the intrepid […]

Having reached mammals in our meanderings, and the human involvement in global plant dispersal (admirably explored in Michael Pollan’s book The Botany of Desire) notwithstanding, we couldn’t ignore our nearest and dearest living relative, the critically-endangered chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus), in this curious catalogue of –chory. Kimberley Hockings et al. report on the dispersal of […]

Yasuhiro Uehara and Naoto Sugiura describe a new mutualistic relationship between a cockroach and Monotropastrum humile (Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society 185: 113–118, 2017; https://doi.org/10.1093/botlinnean/box043). [M. humile is a mycoheterotrophic herb [a plant that obtain nutrients from mycorrhizal fungi that are attached to the roots of a photosynthetic vascular plant], which is another interesting […]

As organisms that are mainly fixed in one place, plants have a problem if they are to extend their range and spread to new areas by production of a new generation. This fixedness of plants is also a barrier when it comes to exchanging genetic material between individuals during sexual reproduction and producing that next […]

Another kind of experiment that takes place out in the real world is when non-native species are introduced into new areas. Usually, and understandably, this causes a knee-jerk response that assumes this must be a bad thing and the invaders must be removed at all costs. However, is such an ‘invasion’ always bad? Might there […]

How close are experiments to nature? The answer isn't clean cut, partly because nature is messy.

For sunflowers a friend is not someone you can lean on - as Nigel Chaffey finds out.

Mr Cuttings hears of a new journal launched this summer, and is appropriately excited.

The argan tree doesn't have to be annoying to really get your goat.

Thanks to a new tool, botanists have the power to observe and operate in even more remote parts of the world than before.