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Botany trending on Twitter: #iamabotanist!

At last Twitter is alive with the sound of botany! Or at least the dulcet tones of a podcast from Dr Chris Martine of Bucknell University in the USA and a host of hashtags proclaiming #iamabotanist and #reclaimthename.


Dr M’s mini-quiz answer #3: the mystery wet weekend plant!

OK, the soggy Bank Holiday Monday is over and now we are into a soggy week at work! You’ve had plenty of sodden hours to contemplate this plant so here’s the low down: The mystery plant is in the family Amaranthaceae which includes three genera. (1) Chenopodium which is a genus of annual herbs with grooved, often striped stems and leaves which are often mealy
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Dr M’s botanical mini-quiz #3: something for a wet Bank Holiday Monday!

OK it’s a wet soggy Bank Holiday Monday (as usual!) so why not dry yourself off and warm yourself up with Dr M’s mystery plant mini-quiz #3! This is a plant doing rather well in Dr M’s Mum’s garden in the Wye Valley near Chepstow at the moment. Can you get family? genus? species? Close-up image coming a bit later!


Dr M’s mini-quiz answer #2: the monocot which breaks the rules!

So #2 in Dr M’s weekend mystery plant mini-quiz was a grass-like plant for sure, but without one of the defining feature of the family, a ligule! Check the images here if you want to remind yourself. A grass without a ligule is that possible? Is it really a grass? Yes it is possible (though uncommon), and yes it is a grass! And from the featured
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Dr M’s weekend botany mini-quiz #2: a plant which breaks the rules!

OK it’s nearly the weekend, so to get you in the mini-holiday spirit here is #2 in Dr M’s new botanical mini-quiz series: a plant which breaks the rules! Dr M likes nothing more than a plant which breaks the rules because plants which don’t quite do what we expect challenge us and teach us lots about the importance of things like variation and plasticity in
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eXtreme botany on tour Day 3: eight barmy botanists get lost in Estonian forest

OK, day three of eXtreme botany on tour finds our eight intrepid barmy botanists (and a driver) heading out of Poland into Lithuania, Latvia and ending up (more by luck than judgement) at a forest campsite on the Baltic coast of Estonia, near the town of Parnu. At around 600 km (ca 370 miles) this is not as eXtreme as day 1 but bearing in mind we had stop-offs in
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Dr M’s mini-quiz answer #1 – and the cute little legume is…

Well you have had some time to ponder this little fellow, and so now here is the answer: Ornithopus perpusillus (Bird’s-foot). This cute little legume is a prostrate hairy annual with stems up to about 30cm long and leaves pinnate with 4-12 pairs of leaflets. Flowers are small creamy and red veined in small heads of 2-6 together with a pinnate bract below the
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Dr M’s weekend mystery plant mini-quiz #1 – cute little legume!

It’s the weekend and Dr M is just back from eXtreme botany European Tour 2014 and has got a touch behind with posting on drmgoeswild so a good time to launch a new series. Dr M’s weekend mystery plants is a mini-quiz posting a mystery plant for you to ID then in a few days comes the answer and some botanical info for your
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Botanical selfies: eXtreme botany at 3600 m with Alan Elliott

The latest in Dr M’s series of botanical selfies ascends 3600 m and finds PhD student Alan Elliott giving up on computer games and going wild about Mecanopsis… I am… Alan Elliott, a final year PhD researcher at the University of Edinburgh and the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh working on a project looking the dynamics of speciation in the Himalaya. I got into botany… by accident.
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eXtreme botany on tour – follow the movements of 8 barmy botanists in the Baltic States soon!

2014 marks the first anniversary of eXtreme botany and Dr M is celebrating by embarking on a European tour from the Czech Republic, through Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and from thence across the water to Finland! The first posts already published have seen 8 barmy botanists in a bus (and a driver) travelling from Czech Republic through Poland. Dr M knows you are waiting for the next
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