Home   Posts tagged "Asteraceae"

Tag Archives: Asteraceae

Come into the garden!

As the UK heatwave continues Dr M says why not let botany cool you down, come in the garden, your garden, any garden! Dr M’s own garden is very much enjoying the sunny weather on the whole and his sunflower certainly appreciates the currently abundant morning noon and evening sunshine! Dr M says: The English summer is well known for its transience and so enjoy it
Learn more »


Dr M’s autumn botany class: lovely bit of Asteraceae on campus

Dr M’s second botany lesson for his MSc Plant Diversity and MSc SISS students was all about getting to know the top-twenty plant families in Britain. Students divided themselves into smaller groups and set out to different parts of the University of Reading campus to collect material of flowering plants and to bring them back to the lab.


Dr M’s botany class homework – a key to common plant families

Dr M has set his students some homework. Having already started to look at the top-twenty plant families this term, Dr M has asked his students to construct a key to the top fourteen families of dicotyledons (broad-leaved flowering plants).


Dr M’s mini-quiz from Maiden Castle: the answers part 1…

It’s one thing to rampage the ramparts and scale the slopes of Maiden Castle, but have you survived Dr M’s chalk grassland mini-quiz?


Dr M’s mini-quiz answer #4: and the eXtreme botanical hitchhikers were…

For the love of seeds how did you do?! Well, there were three obvious families clinging to Dr M’s eXtreme botany boots, and one less obvious and no doubt others lurking in nooks, crannies and crevices as they do!


To be Cotoneaster or not Cotoneaster? That is the question…?

Cotoneaster is a diverse genus of shrubs and small trees in the family Rosaceae and much beloved of gardeners (but less so by  British conservationists see below!).


Another of those damned elusive yellow compositae!

Dr M has already posted (here) on those conspicuous and characteristic yellow dandelion-like plants which we see all around, especially in grassland and on waste ground and which, despite their superficial resemblance to Dandelions (Taraxacum sp), actually include a number of related genera.


Dr M’s Spring term plant ID test: vascular plants

Dr M’s students have returned from the vacation and spent the first week of the new term on the New Year Plant Hunt in which they and Dr M found 38 species in flower on the University of Reading campus! This week Dr M set his students a plant ID test of vascular plants and bryophytes. This was a formative test which is a
Learn more »


The top 30 British vascular plant species – how do you do?

Can you recognise the commonest plant species in Britain? Dr M has previously posted the 30 most common British plant species based on data in the New Atlas of the British and Irish Flora and the Online Atlas of the British and Irish Flora.


A suitable case for the eXtreme botanist!

OK, so you find this plant on abandoned railway sidings in West London. It looks like Ragwort (Senecio jacobaea) but the leaves are all wrong, they are very thin, even grass-like, alternate and clasping the stem.  The flower books are not a lot of help and none of the illustrations looks anything like it.