It's good to be back in the land of the snake fruit (Salacca zalacca). Indonesia 🫶🏻

Trevesia burckii produces otherworldly leaves the shape of snowflakes. This formation may be an adaptation to help sunlight filter down to lower leaves, helping the plant photosynthesize in shaded forests.

Eloise, my 9 year old toad, changes colour with the season. Today she's wearing her best autumn colours. Toads alter their skin colour using pigment-containing cells that expand or contract in response to temperature and light. Soon she'll turn dark brown as the nights get cold.

STUNNING new family book by @jondrori.bsky.social showing how plants' lives and ours are intertwined. Imaginative, beautiful, fun x

A pencil portrait I've just completed featuring Rhizanthes deceptor - one of the world's strangest flowers - and its custodians, in the Sumatran rainforest.

The world's smallest and largest flowers:

A montage of nature I have painted over the years:

Today we described a new species of 'desert hyacinth': Cistanche mimii, from the Middle East. Welcome to science you beautiful thing ✨ Published in #Phytokeys.

A pencil portrait I've just completed featuring a farmer I met in Inner Mongolia. Like many of my subjects, I suppose he'll never see his portrait - never know that the brief moment my orbit swung into his would be captured forever in graphite ✨

Little dancing little stars ✨ The seed-heads of a pincushion starflower (Lomelosia stellata).

A pencil sketch I've just completed depicting Ma Xue Mei, a farmer I met on an expedition to Inner Mongolia who grows medicinal plants sustainably.

Turning over a fern leaf reveals an astonishing stencilled constellation of spores:

Look what my night-flowering cactus just did:

Ghost flowers (Monotropa uniflora) rise from the forest floor like pale seahorses. They lack leaves, roots and chlorophyll because rather than manufacturing food from sunlight, they steal it from an underground fungus.

Once in a while one of my succulents sends a star into the world ⭐

It was a privilege to meet these farmers in Inner Mongolia last month. Sketching is my little way of thanking the world for the beauty it sends my way x

The floating leaves of the mosaic plant (Ludwigia sedioides) form self-assembling rafts of diamonds that slowly conquer the water.

Gutted that you missed our recent #WildFlowerID webinars? Mulleins (with @anaturalistabroad.bsky.social) Mints (with @ambroisebaker.bsky.social) Broomrapes (with @christhorogood.bsky.social) No problem, we recorded them & the videos are on our YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Some pitcher plants of Borneo I have just finished illustrating in pen and ink:

Here are samples of 'meat ginseng' (Cistanche deserticola) I saw on an expedition to the Inner Mongolian desert last month. These are the underground stems, harvested for Traditional Chinese Medicine. Used as a tonic for strength, they resemble snakes, and can reach the size of pythons!

Today on a roadside in southern Italy, I found picris broomrape (Orobanche picridis), a rare parasitic plant that sends up ambitious spears of white blossom. It is my gift to conjure these plants out of the earth wherever I go 💫

A watercolour illustration of Nepenthes stenophylla I've just completed. #art #illustration #botanicalillustration #arte #watercolour #watercolor #acuarela #nepenthes

Our sapphire tower (Puya alpestris) blossomed today for the first time in five years. It is native to the Chilean Andes where its flowers - an improbable shade of blue - are visited by birds.

Sometimes I see so much natural beauty on my expeditions it can be hard to make sense of at the time. Here is a collection of some of the many 'desert hyacinths' (Cistanche spp.) I found in the Inner Mongolian Desert last week - plants that erupt out of the sand like floral fireworks.

The curious life forms of suǒ yáng 锁阳 (Cynomorium), seen last week in the Inner Mongolian Desert. Suǒ yáng has a unique history of use in treating a whole host of ills, including 'sexual problems'. A leafless parasite, it steals its food from the roots of desert shrubs, and is pollinated by flies.

My expedition's aim was to meet local farmers. 'Rou Cong Rong' has potential as a future food in a changing world. Summoned out of sand as if by magic, I learned how, through wizardry, wisdom & more. Thank you China & Inner Mongolia for all you taught me. With love, your little tiger 小虎

Rou cong rong, or 'meat ginseng', is a herb harvested here for Traditional Chinese Medicine that looks like something out of Hogwarts. Its fat, scaly stems - used here as a tonic for strength - resemble snakes.

We took bikes into the heart of the Inner Mongolian desert to meet local families who harvest medicinal herbs sustainably. I found rare plants, sunshine and kindness there.

The Mongolian Desert is full of curiosities. Among the strangest is Cynomorium, which forces its red fists through the sand. Here it is a much-valued plant, harvested sustainably by locals, to treat stomach complaints.

A master of camouflage: seen today in the Mongolian Desert.

We followed an ancient camel track and look what it took us to - the finest desert hyacinths I've ever seen (Cistanche deserticola). The local people said they opened today: they came out for us.

Forever grateful to this team ❤️

A half-formed miracle: rare and endangered desert hyacinth (Cistanche deserticola) in bud, bursting through the sand. Seen today in the Mongolian Desert.

I travelled half a world to find this: a rare and endangered species of desert hyacinth (Cistanche deserticola; 肉苁蓉; ròucōngróng), seen today in the wilds of the Mongolian Desert.

The things we do for a plant...

In the depths of the Mongolian Desert today, we found suǒ yáng 锁阳 (Cynomorium)! This extraordinary plant is much celebrated here as a medicinal plant and used to treat stomach complaints. A leafless parasite, it steals its food from the roots of desert shrubs.

My day:

Thank you friends for sharing your special place with me today 🙏🏻

Today I went to the Mongolian Desert and found beauty beneath my feet: drifts of pink and white blossom (Astragalus spp.) sprouting directly out of the sand.

Our work, just published in Plant Communications, solves the mystery of how giant waterlilies achieve such size. We deep-dived into their genomes & found a massive accumulation of cells in early development to offset production costs: like paying for bricks cheap, upfront, before building the house.

Today, high on a rocky ledge in the mountains of China, I found Rehmannia glutinosa: a beautiful hemi-parasitic plant with large, upside down flowers that seem afloat.

My oil painting, completed a few years ago, depicting a pitcher plant (Nepenthes villosa) in its natural habitat. #oiloncanvas #oilpainting #art #Illustration #illustracion #illustrationartist #botanicalillustration #nepenthes

Nine years ago I raised you from a tadpole. Happy birthday Eloise, you beautiful toad, you x

The titan arum is a wonder of the natural world, with flowering structures that can reach three metres in height. My friends in Sumatra just sent me these photos of one in the wild - in bud - located today ✨

Balanophora is a parasitic plant that lacks chlorophyll, and steals its nutrients from tree roots. It lives beneath the rainforest floor, where once in a while, it sends up an orb that glows like the moon.

A collection of bee orchids I’ve encountered. Bee orchids mimic the look and smell of female insects to trick male insects into trying to mate with them: thrusting against the flowers, the male insects pick up and deliver pollen without reward (a process known as pseudocopulation).

A lesson in symmetry from a Bulbophyllum orchid, in bloom today, at Oxford Botanic Garden.

The Salvinia effect, seen in both plants and animals, describes the permanent air-capture of a textured surface when submerged underwater. It’s named after this floating fern, Salvinia. Applied to ship hulls, it reduces drag, meaning both lower fuel consumption, and less antifouling chemicals.

A small galaxy of starfish flowers (Apocynaceae subfamily Asclepiadoideae) ⭐

Increasingly our research sees us working with colleagues in other fields. Together with @christhorogood.bsky.social at the Oxford Botanic Garden, we've solved a centuries-old mystery: how does the the squirting cucumber squirt? www.maths.ox.ac.uk/node/69939