At last the wonderful botanical outreach project #wildflowerhour has hit Dr M’s fav family – the Poaceae with the #grasschallenge for Sunday 23rd June 2019! To celebrate, Dr M popped into his garden and plucked some grasses from his Poaceae-rich #nomow lawn. Without really trying, Dr M returned with a big bunch of grasses and then set about trying to photograph them in the
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It is not uncommon to hear about common plant sightings from botanists via social media these days but on 16th June I received a tweet from a past Reading botany student concerning a rare plant spotted in Reading, this was a Lizard Orchid (Himantoglossum hircinum) which had been photographed on a busy roadside verge. The Lizard Orchid is a very rare and legally protected
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It’s no secret that Dr M is raving potty about Poaceae so imagine his delight when he saw the new and wonderful @Wildflowerhour also getting into the Poaceous groove with their #grasschallenge! This time of year (June) is truly wondrous for Poaceae (but not hay fever sufferers!) as the vegetative shoots spring into action and come alive with flowering inflorescences bearing those strange yet magical
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OK, Listen up plant lovers and botanophiles alike! Stuff like this really doesn’t happen that often, I mean, when did you last have a chance to attend a Dr M Botanical course? Like never, or at least oh so rarely! We are talking hen’s teeth, we really are! So, come on down to London town and join the botanical love and joy at Dr M’s
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Dr M says: Your patience is rewarded and here at last is Part the Second of Dr M’s long-awaited Poaceae quiz! Grasses, so the Poaceae song goes, and as Dr M’s students on University of Reading MSc Plant Diversity know well, have “flowers reduced to spikelets strange yet magical”. The grass spikelet is indeed a wondrous thing and has an intrinsic beauty and fascination
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It’s bluebell time and there is nothing quite like the heady scent and radiant sky-blue vistas of a British bluebell wood in springtime. The UK plant charity Plantlife is currently running a competition to choose the Nation’s Favourite Wildflower. Britain is home to many beautiful wildflowers so there are plenty to choose from but it’s probably no surprise that so far, the number 1 position
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The Twittersphere is a fine place for meeting and making new botanical friends and this is where Dr M met PhD candidate Sarah Jose from the University of Bristol a while back where he noticed her tweets on plant research news and other botanical and environmental stuff. Sarah sees PhD students as “apprentice researchers” and has this advice to new PhD starters – “Make the most of
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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
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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 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
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