Home   Archive by category "eXtreme botany" (Page 8)

eXtreme botany

There’s an app for that? technology for UK tree ID

Dr M will be meeting his new University of Reading MSc Plant Diversity and MSc Species Identification and Survey Skills (SISS) students for his first big teach-in on Thursday.


Dr M’s mini-quiz from Maiden Castle: answers part 2 – vegetative ID!

If you arrived here and have not completed Dr M’s Maiden Castle mini-quiz and you would like to, then check it out here! and then the answers here! If you have, well, with Part 1, the easy bit, out of the way, here’s the real eXtreme botany bit: vegetative plant ID and in chalk grassland – one of the most species-rich communities in Britain – to
Learn more »


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 weekend mini-quiz from the ramparts of Maiden Castle in Dorset!

Dr M was in Dorset recently and took the opportunity to visit one of the largest and most complex of Iron Age hillforts in Europe, Maiden Castle, whose huge multiple ramparts once protected several hundred residents. It’s an old, old site and excavations famously carried out in the 1930s and 1980s revealed the site’s 4,000-year history, from a Neolithic causewayed enclosure to a small Roman
Learn more »


Dr M’s botanical selfies head north to a Swedish Sphagnum fancier…

Dr M is always delighted when his students move on from University of Reading to push botanical boundaries forward in their careers, and Charlie Campbell is one such, one of Dr M’s recent MSc Plant Diversity students and now a PhD student and deep Sphagnophile to boot! Charlie is already known to DrMGoesWild, previously seen discussing, you guessed it, Sphagnum (check his previous Sphagnum post here). But now
Learn more »


Dr M says “hello and goodbye” to MSc Plant Diversity students…

Dr M says: It’s that time of year again! Last year’s University of Reading MSc Plant Diversity students (class of 2014 pictured above) are just about finishing their dissertations and ready to move on to botanical pastures new, while the class of 2015 are soon to be on their way to Reading for a new exciting and, if Dr M has anything to do with
Learn more »


Biome-ic Woman: In tropical Eden with Lucy Wenger

Botanical theme parks don’t come along every day and so the Eden project has carved a special niche for plant lovers everywhere. Without plants our world is no world and there are few better place to see this message in action than at Eden.


Dr M’s mini-quiz answer #5: spider’s plants…

Dr M’s mini-quiz #5 was about the plants used by a spider to support her web? Here they are again: Well the family of the upright monocot (left) was pretty obvious, Juncaceae and the genus Juncus, but which species? You might have wondered Juncus effusus (Soft Rush) but that species has either a lax or compact inflorescence, whilst the plant here has an interrupted
Learn more »


Dr M’s weekend mini-quiz #5: come into my parlour…

…said the spider to the … spider! And so to celebrate national insect week (ye\h Dr M knows spiders are Arachnids not Insects but…!) Dr M offers these images of a female spider and her husband (aka lunch) on their web abode outside Dr M’s parlour (aka kitchen!) recently. Dr M is particularly fond of spiders, but, however lovely they might be, Arachnida hardly
Learn more »


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!