Another question from a past Botanical University Challenge Contest. Who wrote the book 'Finding the Mother Tree'? #BUC2026 botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/

About 10% of flowering plant species are orchids (family Orchidaceae). Spectacular wild flowers, surprisingly common in urban UK. The around 28,000 species are rarely foods (vanilla, salep) but valuable in horticulture for flowers. #BUC2026 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

🌱🌾🌍🌺🌳🌲🌿🐡🌴🖌️Botanical University Challenge #BUC2026 like to try different social media. In latest issue newsletter, read students' experiences with Advent Botany on TikTok! botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/

🌱🌾🌎🌍🌺🌳🌿🐝🪳🌴🖌️🧬🐡 Plants are sources of complex chemicals that can be used as medicines for humans. Vincristine (Oncovin) can be used in some cancer therapies. Now made synthetically, it was initially extracted from Madagascar periwinkle, Catharanthus roseus. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌎🌍🌺🌳🌿🐝🪳🌴🖌️🧬🐡 Only 11 days to go! Let's see how far we can get with the Botanical University Challenge Crowdfunder to support this year's Student Botany Festival in August. Read all about it at: reading.hubbub.net/p/botanicalu...

🌱🌾🌎🌍🌺🌳🌿🐝🪳🌴🖌️🧬🐡 Black bryony and white bryony. Names make them sound similar. Both climb up things, both green plants, both have red berries, but otherwise, how similar are they really? Not so much! #BUC2026

Name this fern! A question from a past Botanical University Challenge contest. #BUC2026 #ferns #plants #loveplants 🌱🌾🌎🌍🌺🌳🌿🐝🪳🌴🖌️🧬🐡

🌱🌾🌎🌍🌺🌳🌿🐝🪳🌴🖌️🧬🐡 Botanical #joke! What more can I say? Comes from The Thymes, newsletter Botanical University Challenge #BUC2026 #plants #loveplants

🌱🌾🌎🌍🌺🌳🌿🐝🪳🌴🖌️🧬🐡Read about a real rocket scientist in current issue of Botanical University Challenge newsletter. From liking plants, finding them through a biological sciences degree to starting a career in research with them. #BUC2026https://botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/

🌱🌾🌎🌍🌺🌳🌿🐝🪳🌴🖌️🧬🐡 Another team about Botanical University Challenge #BUC2026. Team Rage Against the Rhododendron from University of Galway/Ollscoil na Gaillimhe. Amazingly, Botany in description of its plant-related degree!! Read their whole account at: botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/

What is your favourite plant? Read about John Warren 's in latest issue of newsletter Botanical University Challenge. Also see artwork by Ansa Mitchell, University of Nottingham who has just joined The Thymes team! #BUC2026 botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/

🌱🌾🌎🌍🌺🌳🌿🐝🪳🌴🖌️🧬🐡Newsletter Botanical University Challenge #BUC2026 interviews botanists. Issue 15 - Colin Clubbe, recently retired Head of Conservation Science at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, but continuing his life-long involvement in plant conservation. botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/

🌱🌾🌏🌺🌳🌲🌿🐡🌴🖌️ Wollemi pine (Wollemia nobilis), rare Australian temperate rainforest plant, first brought to public attention in 1994. Only around 60 large individual trees in the wild. Now it grows in botanic gardens around the world & home gardens in UK. Conifer, family Araucariaceae. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🌳🌲🌿🐡🌴🖌️Birthday wishes to Sir David Attenborough! In 2022 he signed book 'Green Planet', about plants. Prizes for winners of Botanical University Challenge. Jonathan Mitchley talks with Rich Clarke about it on BBC Radio Berks!! At 2h 43min into recording. www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

🌱🌾🌍🌺🌳🌲🌿🐡🌴🖌️ Another team writes about their #BUC2026 experience in the on-line contest. This time, Cambridge, who are in the live semifinal in August. @camplantsci.bsky.social Read more at: botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/

🌱🌾🌍🌺🌳🌲🌿🐡🌴🖌️ Another team writes about their experience of the on-line rounds of Botanical University Challenge this year. First ever team from University of Essex. Undergraduate plant science modules, some amazing plant research. botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/

Poetry and art inspired by plants. But what species inspired the bluebell design? See the whole book in the Internet Archive! archive.org/details/oldg... #BUC2026 🌱🌾🌍🌺🌳🌲🌿🐡🌴🖌️

🌱🌾🌍🌺🌳🌲🌿🐡🌴🖌️Newsletter #BUC2026 book reviews. Catherine Martinez reads them so you can decide if any are for you. How plants benefit people, as well as food, buildings, clothes, fuel, so even more reason to treasure & understand plants. botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🐡🐝🪳🌴🖌️Read about history Botanical University Challenge, from start 2016 with 5 teams at Royal Botanic Garden, Kew to international 32 teams #BUC2026 at University of Reading. Going on-line for Covid made BUC grow. Support crowdfunder for more botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿🐝🪳🌴🖌️🍃Read about teams new to Botanical University Challenge #BUC2026 in Issue 15 The Thymes! University of Cardiff team, the Greenhouse Gang, made it to the quarterfinal on their first time! botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃 🐡 Read about the on-line rounds of #BUC2026 held February. 32 teams from UK & Irish universities & other institutions. The top scoring 4 are semifinalists, compete again August. Can't remember much? Download issue 15 of the BUC newsletter botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃 🧪🐡 Issue 15 The Thymes, newsletter of Botanical University Challenge, now out. 22 page issue - Feb online contest result, team accounts, 10 years of BUC, fave plants, book reviews, interviews ... Oh, just go and download it! #BUC2026 botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃 🐡 #bioinspired #kineticart Florencentia, flowering, flowers opening & closing, #circadianrhythm. Photosynthesis ballet. By Atelier Sisu, i.e. Sydney-based design studio led by artists Renzo B. Larriviere and Zara Pasfield. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃 🐡 Plants and sport. Top class football needs top class grass pitch, and meticulous care of it. #BUC2026 www.theguardian.com/football/202...

🌱🌿🌾🌳🍁🪴🏵🍋🍄‍🟫🐝🐜🐌#Insects need #plants. Brimstone butterfly, Gonepteryx rhamni, sips nectar from flowers, spends winter as adult in evergreens like holly but needs alder or common buckthorn shrubs (Frangula alnus, Rhamnus cathartica) as a caterpillar. #BUC2026

🌱🌿🌾🌳🍁🪴🏵🍋🍄‍🟫🐝🐜🐌Lemon grass (Cymbopogon citratus ) from S E Asia. Yes, a grass (family Poaceae) but with strong lemon scent from crushed leaves and as a flavour. Used in cooking and drinks. Relishes temperature 25 - 30 Centigrade, not happy below 10 degrees. ##BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🐡Smiling students from University of Aberdeen who won Botanical University Challenge 2025. Keep this year's contestants happy by contributing to our crowdfunder. You know botany needs support, and #BUC2026 also makes it fun for students in UK & Ireland. reading.hubbub.net/p/botanicalu...

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🐡 Star anise (Illicium verum) has anethole, characteristic flavour in cookery & drinks. Another compound from tree, shikimic acid, was industrial precursor to oseltamivir (Tamiflu) from 1990s until recombinant (GM) bacteria developed mid-2000s. People need plants! #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃 🧪🐡 #EarthDay Botanical University Challenge #BUC2026 for UK and Irish students to develop their botanical knowledge, and meet at Student Botany Festival. Insects need plants! Our Crowdfunder is live. Donate and share!! reading.hubbub.net/p/botanicalu... #EarthDay2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🐡 Who is this man? Made groundbreaking system used across biological sciences. First description published in 1735, system was in 10th edition by 1758, showing how it had caught on. Still in use now. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🐡 #Springflowers. Sweet violets, cultivated for their scent, selected in different colours, once an important cut flower (Victorians). Edible flowers. Extracted for scent and flavoured syrup. Still a lovely wild woodland edge and hedgerow plant in UK and Ireland. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🐡Questions in Botanical University Challenge about ferns. Student wrote about her favourite in the newsletter. Another about how he got into ferns & is now British Pteridological Soc committee member! Crowdfunder lets these meet. See QR code or reading.hubbub.net/p/botanicalu...

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃 🧪🐡 The crowdfunder for #BUC2026, specifically the 4th Student Botany Festival in August, is underway. This event has such an impact on UK & Irish students keen on botany. Look at reading.hubbub.net/p/botanicalu... Keep them smiling! Please donate or share!!

#Spring Trees in flower. Bay tree (Laurus nobilis) now flowering enthusiastically around UK and Ireland. Separate male and female trees (dioecious). Leaves as food flavouring. Evergreen large shrub/small tree family Lauraceae once covered Mediterranean Basin in forests. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃 Plants from around the world, mostly now in cultivation for white blooms around Easter time. Easter lilies (and cactus). Liliaceae, Amaryllidaceae, Araceae and Cactaceae! #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃 Several #Spring plants in UK & Ireland with local names including #Easter that were not adopted more widely. Easter ledger pudding of its leaves plus dandelion, lady's mantle (or nettle) leaves with barley & egg. Accompaniment for veal & bacon. Yum? #BUC2026

'Let's Botanize: 101 Ways to Connect with Plants' by Ben Goulet-Scott and Jacob Suissa, set among the wild and garden plants of USA, sounds like an excellent way into appreciating and understanding plants. It is not all about plant identification. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🍂 🌲🌿🎄🍃This little plant grows all over the UK and Ireland (and now worldwide) in lawns & grassland. Leaves look like grass, but is technically a rush, Juncaceae. Flowers in #Spring April - May, also has name Good Friday Grass & Chimney Sweeps. Milfyw (Welsh), Giúnach léana (Irish) #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🍂 🌲🌿🎄🍃Other non-flowering plants start to reproduce in #Spring. Gymnosperms - 'naked seeds' - can take years to develop from ovule to seed - so need to get started! #BUC2026

Not only flowering plants start to reproduce in #Spring. Horsetails produce spores, dominated late Paleozoic forests, first evolved in early Jurassic. A few species still survive, with beige cones releasing spores before green leaves appear later. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🍂 #Spring Liverworts and mosses - no flowers, but have spores for sexual reproduction. Very short-lived structures in liverworts, but present much longer in mosses. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🍂 Some beautiful spring flowers are challenging to see in the wild. For example purple saxifrage, Saxifraga oppositifolia. Green cushions with gorgeous purple flowers, but in UK and Ireland only on mountains. Likes really inaccessible sites! #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🍂 Plant knowledge becoming more popular! Cambridge Uni botanic garden @cubotanicgarden.bsky.social joins UK others offering short courses plant vocabulary & ID. Also BSBI @bsbibotany.bsky.social Identiplant (enrol December), Plantlife @plantlifeuk.bsky.social , Field Studies Council #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌴🍂🌳🐝🪳🧪 Botanical University Challenge #BUC2026 - UK and Ireland's quiz and festival for degree students enthusiastic about plants. Currently seeking financial support!

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌴🍂🌳🐝🪳 #Springflowers #BUC2026 Spring is arriving around UK and Ireland. A few cold, wet, days can't hold it back! Bluebells opening until they reach glorious blue haze across woodlands.

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌴🍂🌳🐝🪳 Victorian stained glass in 11th century church (many later additions/repairs!). Look closely at rose window (plant name!) and see - vine leaves. Plant images get everywhere. In Cheltenham Minster, St Mary's, UK. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌴🍂🌳🐝🪳 Biological nitrogen fixation, as in relationship between legumes (peas beans, lupins) and rhizobium bacteria requires ridiculous amount of energy, oxygen-free structure in roots (nodules), lots of genes and well-timed communication between the partners. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌴🍂🌳🐝🪳 What causes the bright colours/colors of flowers, leaves and fruits? Some are the carotenoids - over 1,100 different chemical structures that result in reds, yellows and oranges. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌴🍂🌳🐝🪳 Spring! Birdsong. Flowers appearing. Also flowers on trees, including gymnosperms - flowering cones. Some pretty colours/colors, like these female cones of Larch. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌴🍂🌳🐝🪳 Fossil plants. Fallen apart as preserved in rock but still with their intrinsic beauty. Find them on the beach, at the roadside, in museums. #BUC2026