Botanical Electronic News

Category(-ies): Plant Conservation , Sources of Botanical News

“BEN (Botanical Electronic News) is an electronic newsletter that deals with botany and plant ecology of predominantly British Columbia, Canada and the Pacific Northwest (from California to Alaska) with broader references to planet Earth.”

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Posted by Daniel Mosquin at 10:31 PM

Detecting landmines with plants

Category(-ies): Novel Uses of Plants

Aresa, a Danish company, has genetically engineered plants of Arabidopsis thaliana (thale cress) that generate anthocyanins in the presence of nitrous dioxide. As nitrous dioxide is released by landmines, the plants turn from green to red.

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Posted by Daniel Mosquin at 4:56 PM

Rafflesia and Mitrastema

Category(-ies): Plant Relationships

Deciphering the nearest living relatives of non-chlorophytic parasitic plants has been difficult; scientists looking at plant relationships often use changes within the DNA of the chloroplasts to determine how plants are related. Researchers at Western Michigan University, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia and Sabah Parks (Malaysia) instead looked at mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which is not often used, and were able to determine that Rafflesia (the plant with the largest flower) and Mitrastema are not closely related. This suggests that parasitism has evolved multiple times in different lineages of plants.

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Posted by Daniel Mosquin at 5:20 PM

'Not guilty' plea for importing orchid

Category(-ies): Plant Legal News and Issues

A followup to the weblog entries on Phragmipedium kovachii and Selby Botanical Garden pleading guilty for its role in the orchid case:

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Posted by Daniel Mosquin at 1:38 PM

Araucariaceae of New Caledonia

Category(-ies): Plant Conservation

Frequent readers of the questions posed on the UBC Botanical Garden Forums will note that there is a lot of interest in monkey puzzle trees - in fact, “monkey puzzle trees” or some variation on that theme is always in the top ten searches people do to arrive at the garden site using search engines. Monkey puzzle trees, Araucaria araucana, are indeed deserving of people's curiousity - they look exotic, the seeds are edible and they succeed very well in the Vancouver climate.

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Posted by Daniel Mosquin at 4:39 AM

Global warming and species loss

Category(-ies): Climate Change , Plant Conservation

Published in Nature on January 8, 2004:

Feeling the heat - climate change and biodiversity loss

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Posted by Daniel Mosquin at 1:54 AM

Medicinal plants threatened

Category(-ies): Plant Conservation , Plants, Food and Medicine

From the BBC: Increasing interest in herbal medicines has led to pressures on natural populations of the plants harvested for the medicines. Unsustainable harvesting techniques, such as uprooting an entire plant instead of taking a few leaves, are increasing the probability that some species may become extinct.

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Posted by Daniel Mosquin at 12:58 AM

Sydney Parkinson and the Endeavour Expedition

Category(-ies): Botanical Art , Botanical Resources , Plant Explorers

The Natural History Museum of London, England has produced an excellent website devoted to the artwork of Sydney Parkinson. On a voyage of the HMS Endeavour (1768-1771) captained by James Cook and accompanied by Sir Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander, Sydney Parkinson illustrated 674 outline drawings and completed 269 paintings. Unfortunately, Parkinson died at sea during the voyage home, and his unpainted outline drawings were later completed by others.

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Posted by Daniel Mosquin at 7:13 PM

Rhododendron uvariifolium

Category(-ies): Other Botanical Gardens , Plant Conservation

From the Glasgow Herald:

The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh is helping to restore natural populations of Rhododendron uvariifolium on Yulong Xue Shan (Jade Dragon Snow Mountain) in Yunnan, China. The wild population of Rhododendron uvariifolium on the mountain has declined in recent years due partially to a cultural practice of women using the flowers as hair adornments, preventing seed set.

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Posted by Daniel Mosquin at 1:23 PM