Artemis Anest

@arteanest.bsky.social

🌿Assistant Professor at @umontpellier.bsky.social & @umramap.bsky.social🌿 🌍Evolutionary ecologist | Plant architecturist🌳 🌵Exploring biodiversity of plant forms & functions🌸

You know what's cool too ? Plants ! We had 3 of them this year : the cretaceous conifer Sequoites🌲, a really close relative of our modern seed plants called Runcaria🌾, and Asterophyllites, which is the given name of the leaves from carboniferous tree-size horsetails like Calamites🌿

From top to bottom :

Branches and cones of Sequoites, a cretaceous conifer closely related to cypress family (Cupressaceae)

Asterophyllites equisetiformis, aka leaves of the lycopod relative Calamites, a tree-size plant that live during the Carboniferous in what's now Europe.

Reproductive structure of Runcaria heinzelinii, showing spiraling strings, leaves and an upright structure at the center

One of our Fellows has co-curated a fascinating exibition of Indian botanical art. Henry Noltie & Sita Reddy chose 52 drawings by Indian artists, and where possible identified the artists responsible. 'Flora Indica’ is on at the Sherwood Gallery, Kew until 12 April 2026. Images © RBG Kew.

A chinese fan palm, drawn in high levels of detail. Attributed to Vishnuprasad c. 1825Papaver falconer, a poppy. Artist unknown, 1840Painting of a sunflower. Its petals are bright yellow and it has circular black centre. artist unknown, c 1795.

Very proud of @yuansoup.bsky.social on getting this PhD chapter published- a synthesis that started due to travel restrictions from COVID-19 but turned out to be very insightful, highlighting the botanical consequences of defaunation 🦜🦣🥑🥭

Yuanshu Pu@yuansoup.bsky.social · 11mo ago

First PhD paper out!🎉 Dive in here to see how past frugivores and present human pressure jointly shape seed size distributions on Madagascar: doi.org/10.1111/ele.... Huge thanks to Alexander Zizka and my supervisor Renske Onstein @renskeonstein.bsky.social . Excited to keep going on this journey!

With the extinction of dinosaurs, dense, closed-canopy forests could proliferate, leading to shifts in fluvial structure and accumulation of organics. This represented a profound change in the landscape, illustrated here by the incomparable Julius Csotonyi.

Two-panel illustration showing sparse trees in a Cretaceous landscape (bottom) and densely forested Paleocene landscape.