What is the most important part of a scientific paper? Arguably, it’s the Results section– although there are those who might propose that it’s the authors (scientists after all are humans and appreciate having their names associated with the science – especially if it is deemed to be first-rate and published in a high impact […]

High up in the Maloti-Drakensberg World Heritage Site in South Africa, and unexpected visitor is changing ideas of what animals can be pollinators.

How well do we know succulent plants? According to a new paper by Dr Olwen Grace of Kew Gardens, not as well as we should.

Worry no more. Mike Morrison has got your academic poster design.

Mutualistic relationships between different species are common in all ecosystems however double mutualisms, where two interacting species benefit each other for two different functions, e.g. pollination and seed dispersal, have been less well documented. Recently, an increasing number of double mutualisms have been reported between plants and animals, particularly on island ecosystems. One likely reason […]

Members of the plankton are so-called because they don’t have the ability to move against modest currents in the water bodies they inhabit, i.e. they ‘wander’ or ‘drift’ (as in the meaning of the Greek word from which they get their name). These organisms quite literally ‘go with the flow’. Plankton is broadly divided into […]

There’s been plenty of media attention on the threat plastics, especially microplastics, pose to animal life. A paper in New Phytologist suggests that there’s more to this. Plants might be suffering from plastic in the environment too. Rillig and colleagues have outlined a series of threats plastic poses to plant life. At the moment the […]

Plants provide humans with many products and services that are not only important but essential to our existence. We don’t have space to catalogue all of those bountiful botanical benefits here (although we have done our best in this column over the years!). But we can showcase a new one, which may be a glimpse […]

In Central Argentina grows a tree which can produce flowers with different sexual characteristics? Why? Is there an advantage to changing your sex life if you're a plant?

Across Europe, students and young people are taking a stance on climate change and demanding action. From Belgium to Germany, youth-led climate protests are becoming a norm. Known as “School Strike 4 Climate” or Fridays For Future”, they are calling upon governments to declare a climate emergency and make other changes. Young people have a […]

Philip White talks to Martin Broadley about how they wrote some highly-cited reviews as Early Career Researchers.

The plant group known as bromeliads famously includes the commercially important pineapple. However, that ground-growing member of the Bromeliaceae (the more formal name for the pineapple family of flowering plants) is rather atypical because many (most?) of the bromeliads are epiphytes (plants that grow on other plants). In the wild we may view bromeliads with […]