Plants sometimes specialise. Catering for a specific partner can ensure a reliable source of food or pollination. At the same time, relying on that partner limits your adaptability. A new study by Guo and colleagues, A symbiotic balancing act: arbuscular mycorrhizal specificity and specialist fungus gnat pollination in the mycoheterotrophic genus Thismia (Thismiaceae), looks at […]

What is life like in a lake? Is it much like life on the shore, but wetter? Or are the environmental challenges significantly different?

All actively managed journals continually undergo self-analysis as they strive to improve their performance but it’s rare for the outcomes to be widely shared. A recent exception is an account of the first ten years of the not for profit, open access journal AoB PLANTS by its founding Chief Editor Mike Jackson. This informative warts-and-all account […]

Where does the best pollen for reproduction come from? For Anigozanthos manglesii it comes from surprisingly close neighbours.

Why would you need a massive flower to imitate a tiny fly? A new study of a Peruvian orchid reveals something strange is going on.

Within plants live endophytic fungi. Some cause disease in insects, while others seem to have no effect. Yet a new meta-analysis shows even these 'neutral' fungi could act as bodyguards for plants.

The Overstory by Richard Powers, 2018. William Heinemann. As a would-be botanical educator who’s reviewed a lot of botany texts over the years, I don’t really have time to review – or just read – ‘novels’. But, having been impressed with the intelligent-plant-based science fictionesque novel Semiosis last year, and hearing that Richard Powers’ new […]

What is the point of teaching, if someone isn’t going to use that knowledge? A new paper by Bethan Stagg addresses that with a study that not only looks at how well students can learn, but also encourage them to learn more in the future. Meeting Linnaeus: improving comprehension of biological classification and attitudes to […]

A new tool links models of different languages and scales to create entire plants, fields, or regions in silico.

When it comes to meeting the projected 70% increase in food demand in 2050, Dr. Xinguang Zhu considers photosynthetic efficiency to be an unexplored opportunity to deliver significant yield increases. Backing this are two recent studies reporting 15% and 40% increased crop biomass achieved by manipulating photosynthetic efficiency. The targets for both of those studies […]

Evaluation of a generic biomass partitioning model demonstrates accurate temporal patterns of biomass and nitrogen partitioning.

in silico Plants is a peer-reviewed, open access journal publishing research pertaining to all aspects of plant modelling.