Beautiful images illustrate the dawn of modern botany

These delicately detailed representations of plants by a founding figure of modern botany are given a new lease of life in the book Leonhart Fuchs: The New Herbal Life 9 March 2022 By Gege Li Leonhart Fuchs Illustrator Leonhart Fuchs THESE delicately detailed representations of medicinal plants are the work of Leonhart Fuchs, a 16th-century … Read more

Trees: There may be 9200 more species in the world than we thought

A new global estimate of tree diversity suggests there are thousands of undiscovered species, but many will be rare and vulnerable to extinction Environment 31 January 2022 By Adam Vaughan Amazon Rainforest in Ecuador, South America robertharding / Alamy Earth is home to many more types of tree than previously thought, according to researchers who … Read more

Plant science: ‘Near impossible’ grafting technique could revolutionise agriculture

For the first time, grafting has been made to work in monocots, a type of plant including oats, wheats and bananas – and it might improve disease tolerance among these important crops Environment 22 December 2021 By Alex Wilkins A date palm two-and-a-half years after grafting. Inset shows a region at the base of the … Read more

The major science-fiction films that get botany spectacularly wrong

By James Wong Michelle D’urbano WHAT with everything that has happened this year, I have found myself at home watching the box more often than usual. That was especially true recently when I was laid up in bed for three weeks with covid-19. I spent my time largely watching my favourite genre of film: science … Read more