STOP PRESS: BUC 2026 crowdfunding is LIVE! BUC is UK & Ireland’s biggest boldest, leafiest student botany celebration🌿Our students say their knowledge shoots up, careers grow and the BUC community inspires them. Please follow the link to support us ty! 👉 reading.hubbub.net/p/botanicalu...

STOP PRESS: BUC 2026 crowdfunding is LIVE! BUC is UK & Ireland’s biggest boldest, leafiest student botany celebration🌿Our students say their knowledge shoots up, careers grow and the BUC community inspires them. Please follow the link to support us ty! 👉 reading.hubbub.net/p/botanicalu...

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

Sign the Petition

Reconsider the potential suspension of Plant Biology Courses at UoN

c.org

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!?!

🌱🌾🌍🌺🌳🐝 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

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿🐝🍂 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?

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿🐝🪳 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.

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

🌸🌱🌾🌳🪾🍂🐛🐝 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

🌾🌱⚘️🌿🌼🦠🚀 #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

Botanical University Challenge@bucbotany.bsky.social · 9mo ago

🌾🌱⚘️🌿🌼🦠🚀 #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...

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🐝 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

A beautiful ginkgo in my park last week

🌏🌱🌴🌿🌾🌺🍄🌲🌳 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

🌱🌾🌍🌺🌿🍁🌏🌎 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

🌾🌱⚘️🌿🌼🦠 How to make street furniture more attractive. Box of telephone connections - but plants and butterflies! #BUC2026

🌸🌼🌿🌱🥬🥦🌾🌍 18th century teapots - decorated to look like cauliflowers! #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌺🌿🌷🌻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

🌍🌸🌻🌱🌾🌳🪾🍁🥀 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!

Botanical University Challenge@bucbotany.bsky.social · 8mo ago

🌍🌸🌻🌱🌾🌳🪾🍁🥀 Botanical University Challenge at the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland conference @bsbibotany.bsky.social at Edge Hill University, Merseyside today. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🌳🌲🌿🎄❄️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