🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡 Looking for a holiday book read? Reviews of 3 on the more dangerous side of plants, imaginary or real, for the beach, meadow or woodland! Full review at QR code or botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/ Reviews by Catherine Martinez, regular reviewer at The Thymes. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡Trees - same or different? Read Helena Brown 's account of tree diversity - including in the Cheddar Gorge! QR code for the new newsletter! #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡Read an interview with Prof Julie Hawkins, University of Reading, in latest issue of The Thymes, newsletter of Botanical University Challenge. botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/ #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡Tomatillo (Physalis philadelphica, P. ixocarpa, family Solonaceae) originally from Central America & Mexico region. Fruit has a tangy citrus sweetness. Cold sensitive. Doing well in UK so far this year!#BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡 Read about who will ask the questions in semi-final and final of Botanical University Challenge on 19 August. Held at University of Reading campus. If you are in the area, why not go and watch? Link to free tickets on the BUC website. See the July newsletter. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡🧪Announcing! Latest issue newsletter of Botanical University Challenge 2026 now available from website. All about the up-coming competition final 19 August and Fourth Student Botany Festival. Also about past festivals, book reviews, interesting trees, much more. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡 Seed germination. Nothing appears to happen but seed has has signal good time to germinate, lets water in, furious production new proteins, uses stored food. Root emerges, starts working, then shoot pushes up through soil into light. Leaves form, unfold, start photosynthesis #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡 What happens to seeds as they develop into young plants? Video by NatureNow on Wikimedia Commons shows a sunflower seed (family Asteraceae) first extending a root and then shoot pushes its way out of soil. Seed leaves (cotyledons) and stem become green as photosynthesis starts. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿🍃🖌🐡Seeds develop within fruit. Carpel grows into fruit, ovules into embryo & endosperm (food for germination). Outer layers of fruit protect seed but also scatter it from parent plant - via animals, air, mechanical. Pea seeds ejected from fruit (pod) as outer casing dries and twists. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡 Flowering plants have a double fertilisation when sperm meets ovule. Lots of detailed features throughout the many plant families, but key that one sperm fuses with the egg cell (leading to an embryo) & second sperm with polar nuclei for a triploid food store, the endosperm. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡 Sex in plant flowers! Complicated? Individuals can produce only male or only female gametes, or both, but in separate flowers or in one flower. Most species evolved for both male and female at centre of one flower. Male gametes within pollen in anthers, female gamete in ovules. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡Many different flower shapes, indeed used to classify plants. Family Asteraceae has tiny flowers massed together looking like a much bigger one. Each dandelion flower (Taraxacum offincinale, dant y llew, caisearbhán), one thin yellow petal, but together as dramatic golden mass. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡 🧪Book your free tickets to see the live semifinal and final of Botanical University Challenge in person. University of Reading campus, 19 August 2026. Read what students think of the event. The word FUN is in the biggest letters, followed by KNOWLEDGE and INSPIRING. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡 Fresh grape berries come in black, red, green shades. Over 72 million tonnes produced a year worldwide. Wild fruit of Vitis vinifera are dark coloured from anthocyanin chemicals in berry skin. Green, 'white' fruit from natural mutation, 2 genes, stops anthocyanin synthesis. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡 There are botanical jokes, some funnier than others. What is orange and sounds like a parrot? #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡Grapes (Vitis vinifera) now has wind pollinated, hermaphrodite flowers as part of domestication by people since all wild species in genus have separate male and female plants. Leaves and fruit (fresh or dried) are eaten, and grape juice fermented into wine. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡 The Aspidistra (cast-iron plant, bar-room plant, Aspidistra elatior) brightened many a dark, smoky room in the 19th century. Tolerant of neglect! Originates from southern Japan, growing in shade under trees. Potentially long-lived perennial. Monocot in family Asparagaceae. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡 Thrift (Armeria maritima, family Plumbaginaceae). Beautiful tufts of pink. Well adapted to dry conditions in its home around the coasts of the northern hemisphere. Sandy saline soils, so also in some inland sites. Also in gardens with white and red shades of flowers. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡 Masterwort or Hattie’s pincushion (Astrantia major, family Apiaceae). Originally from central & eastern Europe. Ring of long, white, lanceolate bracts below the spray of flowers (umbel) makes flowers look more impressive. Bred into red shades for gardens. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡 Attractive - but can be invasive - plant with bright shiny yellow flowers. Stems grow along ground surface and develop new roots, so one plant can cover a large area. Originates from Europe, North Africa, Asia but now found around most of the world #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡 What are the living relatives of the typical green plants? The Charophyta are multicellular, green, photosynthetic algae. Live in calcium-rich freshwater and are covered with calcium carbonate. Long, thin, stems with whorls of branches. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡Yew (Taxus baccata) is one of the 3 native conifers in the UK. Some are thousands of years old. The one pictured is in a churchyard that was also sacred pre-Christian. Mostly separate male & female trees. First formal description by Linnaeus 1753. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡 If you are in Reading on 19 August, why not spend the afternoon watching the final of Botanical University Challenge live at the university? Immerse yourself in the atmosphere and be amazed at the plant knowledge of the students. QR code for free tickets. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡 Pollen, male gametophyte, on a plant stigma can be recognised as compatible. Allowed to germinate so pollen tube grows downwards through style tissue to reach ovules. Male and female gametes fuse. Start development of seed embryo and supporting tissues. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡 Moonwort looks strange but is a small fern (Botrychium lunaria, family Ophioglossaceae). Strong connection with its mycorrhizal fungus. Lives mostly underground, occasionally putting up a leaf. Found across northern and temperate southern hemisphere. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡Sichuan pepper, spice from dried fruits of plants in genus Zanthoxylum. Same family as citrus, Skimmia and Boronia megastigma. It gives tingling, numbing effect when eaten in food. Not related to chilli peppers or black pepper. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡 Botanical terminology - names for features of plants. Epicalyx: Extra calyx of small bract-like leaflets (episepals) below the true calyx (sepals). Extra cute little frill beneath a flower in some families. Often most easily seen after flower has gone over and fruit is forming. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃 🧪🖌🐡 #BUC2026 Coal balls! From Carboniferous period, made with Ca & Mg-rich minerals that kept plant parts connected and some cells visible in the fossils. Really useful for paleobotanists. Read about one local UK collection. www.kirklees.gov.uk/beta/museums...

I like the idea of a civil orange, I don’t imagine they are inherently rude fruit…

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡 Easy mistake to make, but what are Seville oranges? Sour, not sweet fruit, high in pectin and essential oils. Originates SE Asia. Culinary use for marmalade, duck à l'orange, chutney, mämmi; essential oil in Curaçao liqueur, Cointreau. Tree used as rootstock for sweet oranges. #BUC2026