Agreed! There are hardly any places left doing Plant Biology now in the UK. We kind of need it for the future.....
10.11.2025 11:51
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Agreed! There are hardly any places left doing Plant Biology now in the UK. We kind of need it for the future.....
My students have set up a petition to persuade the University of Nottingham not to close our Plant Biology BSc course
c.org/VPhzVVrHPS
Please consider signing
Funnily enough, Birmingham has strengthened its plant sciences group in the School of Biosciences.
I know. Over here everyone wants to do sports science. Fine, but you only need so many people doing that. And yes, if you take plant science and are halfway decent you will get a good job. Only up side is ancient people like me are still needed!?!
3 pictures of lichens, diagram cross section through. See full article in The Thymes https://botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/
🌱🌾🌍🌺🌳🐝 Students write about their planty enthusiasms in newsletter of Botanical University Challenge #BUC2026. Latest issue has lichens, plant-fungal-bacterial symbiosis. Get introduced to them!
botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/
More on lichens: britishlichensociety.org.uk
Picture 3 young men on a lawn in front of an elegant building.
🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿🐝🍂 Team from University of Sheffield in Botanical University Challenge first time 2025. Read 'The Sheffield Sporangia' experience in the competition's newsletter, The Thymes. Read more at the QR code or: botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/
More new teams #BUC2026?
Picture green leaf with little toothed leaflets. Two have red galls on them. Ruler at side to show scale; lead is about 3 cm long. Grey background. QR code for The Thymes newsletter of BUC, https://botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/
🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿🐝🪳 The core of Botanical University Challenge #BUC2026 is the plant knowledge quiz. See multiple-choice tie-breaker in this year's semifinal. Galls likely for larvae wasp Diplolepis spinosissimae. www.britishplantgallsociety.org Example questions every copy BUC newsletter. Follow QR code.
Pictures of University of Reading - students among campus buildings, plant and insect conservation area, lecture theatre. Text about BUC in Reading 2026.
When and where for Botanical University Challenge #BUC2026? Online 11, 18 & 25 February to select semifinalists from all the teams. Then finals 19 August live at University of Reading. Also 4th Student Botany Festival to 21 August, open to all members of #BUC2026 teams. @drmgoeswild.bsky.social
Green spiky capsules with shiny brown fruit inside.
🌸🌱🌾🌳🍂🐛🐝 Horse chestnut Aesculus hippocastanum, family Sapindaceae. Elegant palmate leaves, tall spikes of large pink-white flowers. In autumn the spiky green fruits with shiny brown seeds, conkers. Used in UK & Ireland for a children's game. Also in early biotechnology to produce acetone. #BUC2026
Screen grab showing International Space Station above a blue-cloudy Earth.
🌾🌱⚘️🌿🌼🦠🚀 #BUC2026 Impressive survival of moss spores, Physcomitrella patens (spreading earthmoss) on outside of International Space Station for 9 months! Vacuum, radiation, dry, too much light, cold. Over 80% germinated when back on Earth. www.cell.com/iscience/ful...
🌍🌸🌻🌱🌾🌳🍁🥀 New today! Plant of the week from Jess, Izzy & Niamh, all students who have competed in Botanical University Challenge.
They have chosen a very seasonal plant for today, the rowan, also called mountain ash. Now often grown in gardens or street tree in UK and Ireland. #BUC2026
Someone needs to clean their space station
Pictures fan-shaped green leaves, yellow fruit-like seeds, look like yellow cherries (actually sarcotesta). Also of hard inner cream-coloured sarcotesta protecting seed inside.
🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🐝 Ginkgo (maidenhair tree, Ginkgo biloba) from East Asia. Last living member of a plant order that evolved over 290 million years ago. Humans have cultivated it for centuries. Attractive fan-shaped leaves, bright yellow in autumn before fall off. ##BUC2026
Ginkgo tree with yellow autumn foliage
A beautiful ginkgo in my park last week
Elegant feathery green leaves of a sago cycad against green leaf background.
🌏🌱🌴🌿🌾🌺🍄🌲🌳 Sago palm or cycad, Cycas revoluta. looks like a palm tree but is a gymnosperm. From Japan originally, now the most widely cultivated cycad. One of several plants used to produce sago. Also grown for its attractive ornamental character. Needs warm or subtropical climate. #BUC2026
3 Pictures, white flowers, round brown seeds, fluted green leaves.
🌱🌾🌍🌺🌿🍁🌏🌎 Coriander, cilantro, used around world in cookery. Leaves & seeds with rather citrus-like flavour & fragrance to many people. Olefactory receptor protein allows us to perceive coriander flavour. Some variations in gene (OR6A2) mean coriander tastes unpleasant, soap & vomit. #BUC2026
Sky blue painted street telephone connection box with paintings spreading bellflower and pearl bordered fritillary butterfly.
🌾🌱⚘️🌿🌼🦠 How to make street furniture more attractive. Box of telephone connections - but plants and butterflies! #BUC2026
Two teapots, but with decoration so they look like cauliflowers. White curds over the top, green leaves on spout, handle and part of sides.
🌸🌼🌿🌱🥬🥦🌾🌍 18th century teapots - decorated to look like cauliflowers! #BUC2026
Two creamware (or pearlware) plates from 1804 - 1810. White background and black-brown edge. In the centre of each plate is an illustration of a flower, taken from Curtis's Botanical Magazine, so these are botanically accurate illustrations. LHS is jasmine, two pairs of green leaves each with several leaflets, and at end of stem a cluster of white flowers. RHS plate has blue navelwort. rhizome/horizontally growing root with shoot arising from it. Entire pairs of oval leaves with a cluster of delicate white flowers at the tip of the stem.
🌱🌾🌺🌿🌷🌻Illustrations inspired by Curtis's Botanical Magazine (started 1787 and still going strong!), painted by Thomas Pardoe around 1805 on creamware from Cambrian Pottery, Swansea, UK. #BUC2026
🌍🌸🌻🌱🌾🌳🍁🥀 Plant of the week from Jess, Izzy & Niamh, all students involved with Botanical University Challenge.
Red dead nettle - downy not a stingy & grows in most of UK and Ireland #BUC2026
Man holding decorat3d clothes bag against posters. Table in front with copies of The Thymes (newsletter of BUC) and various information sheets.
🌍🌸🌻🌱🌾🌳🍁🥀 Botanical University Challenge at the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland conference @bsbibotany.bsky.social at Edge Hill University, Merseyside today. #BUC2026
Great talk from @bucbotany.bsky.social at the #BIBConf25. What an amazing thing. I wish this had been around when I was at uni!
🌱🌾🌍🌺🌳🌲🌿🎄❄️Starting with music! Everyone's favourite Christmas plant - holly! Shiny green leaves, bright red berries. Gorgeous!!
Izzy, Jess and Niamh starting to get us all in the mood for the big event, only about three weeks away!
#BUC2026 #plants #loveplants #christmas #advent #botany
🌱🌾🌍🌺🌳🌲🌿🎄❄️ And here's Advent Botany Day 2! The Christmas Rose. Looks like a rose, but completely different plant family, poisonous and flowers different time of year!!
Let Izzy, Jess and Niamh tell you about it. #BUC2026 #plants #loveplants #Advent #Christmas #flowers
🌱🌾🌍🌺🌳🌲🌿🎄❄️ Advent Botany Day 3!
Let Izzy, Jess and Niamh tell you about it. Hazel, Corylus avellana, treasured for its large tasty nuts and straight shoots useful as poles (from coppicing-style growth).
#BUC2026 #plants #loveplants #Advent #Christmas #flowers
🌱🌾🌍🌺🌷🌿🌻🐝 Flowers in winter important on cool but sunny days. Rosemary flowers (Salvia rosmarinus) with nectar & pollen for buff-tailed bumblebee queen Bombus terrestris. Egg-laying & caring for larvae. Important commercial pollinators in glass house crops.
#BUC2026 #plants #loveplants #bees
🌍🌾🌱🌳🌲❄️🍷Advent Botany Day 4! Another winter tradition in UK and Ireland; flavouring alcohol with fruit, specifically from blackthorn. Sloe gin! Let Jess, Izzy and Niamh tell you more!! #BUC2026 #Christmas
🌱🌾🌍🌺🌳🌲🌿🎄❄️ Day 5 of Advent. What have Niamh, Izzy and Jess got for us today? Walnuts! More tasty tree seeds, and more folk stories. #BUC2026 #Christmas #Advent #Xmas #walnut #plants #trees #loveplants
🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿🧪❄️🎄Day 6 of Advent Botany! The spindle tree that has such pretty seeds. One of a genus with over 140 members that originate all around the world.
Jess, Izzy and Niamh tell you more!
#BUC2026 #AdventBotany #Christmas #plants #shrubs #loveplants
🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿🧪❄️🎄Advent Botany Day 7 - carrots! Delicious vegetable raw or cooked, hot or cold, prominent with a roast or invisible within stew. And not only at Christmas. Let Jess, Izzy and Niamh tell you more in their reel. #BUC2026
