🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃 🧪🐡 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

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌴🍂🌳🐝🪳 Flavour of cinnamon is from chemicals within bark of Cinnamomum genus trees like cinnamaldehyde and eugenol. Plant family Lauraceae. Evergreen trees. Several species grown commercially. South & SE Asia and Oceania/Australasia. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌴🍂🌳🐝🪳 Plants inspiring sculpture. Cow parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris), 2.3 metre high, along a riverside pathway. Similarly tall sculptures of dandelion, horsetail & common reed also along the path. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌴🍂🌳🐝🪳 Plants as national symbols? 17 March, St Patrick's Day, patron saint Ireland. Shamrock (seamróg, young clover), but exactly which plant is 'shamrock'? Usually Trifolium dubium (lesser/yellow clover, Irish: seamair bhuí) or Trifolium repens (white clover, Irish: seamair bhán). #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌴🍂🌳🐝🪳 Question from Botanical University Challenge's past, in 2023. Recognise any of these? One occasionally grows in the UK & Ireland. All in the same plant family. But which one? #BUC2026

talking of five pound notes - I've launched a petition - not for Otters, but Bog-Moss, to replace Churchill. Will you help spread the word? www.change.org/p/replace-wi...

The Birds of America was produced 1827 - 1838 John James Audubon with 435 life sized prints North American birds. Around 200 copies made. Now $6 - 8 million per copy, among most expensive printed books. Also, lots of plants included. See trumpet flower vine, probably Campsis radicans. #BUC2026

The more plants around, the better!

Although teams in Botanical University Challenge are from UK and Ireland, questions can feature plants from around the world. On Day 1 almost half of the 32 teams recognised, or knew, the plant family of the leaves used as part of betel nut chewing. From betel, Piper betle. #BUC2026

#BUC2026 Interesting question - and answer. Bred by Colin Leakey. Read about him and his aims for these beans www.seedsovereignty.info/lunch-at-mr-... Flatulence is not the only problem with beans, also long cooking times and poor bioavailability of iron. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌴🍂🌳🐝🪳 Plants as symbols of powerful families. This gold brooch found 1971 in in roadworks, Victoria Street, Manchester, UK. Made 1280 – 1320. Pods between garnets & sapphires likely Genista sagittalis, winged broom, badge of King Henry II’s father Geoffrey of Anjou. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌴🍂🌳🐝🪳 #InternationalWomensDay2026 See some of the women involved with making Botanical University Challenge happen, scientists included in the questions, asking questions to the team competitors. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌴🍂🌳🐝🪳 Why does song '12 Days of Christmas' lack plants? Christmas tree, holly, cranberries, sprouts, oranges, mistletoe, ivy, carrots, chestnuts, potatoes, poinsettia, sloes, walnuts, onions, Christmas rose, thyme. Christmas would be so different without them! #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌴🍂🌳🐝🪳 Question Botanical University Challenge #BUC2026 about name sweet pea (Lathyrus odoratus) variety. Which member of BUC organisational team had the same name? John Warren @botanyjohninaber.bsky.social - but named after different John Warren! Does a garden plant have same name as you?

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌴🍂🌳🐝🪳 Helen Porter FRS, researched carbohydrate metabolism in plants 1920s - 1960s & developed use of chromatography & radioactive tracers for this. First woman Professor at Imperial College, University of London (1959). Question in Botanical University Challenge #BUC2026 .

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌴🍂🌳🐝🪳Botanical University Challenge #BUC2026 asks teams about genetics that underlie plant shapes. In Day 3, almost half teams knew that gene WUSCHEL has a key role in shoot meristem organisation. In absence this transcription factor, plant looks very different.

Plants as national symbols? 1st March, St David's Day, patron saint of Wales. Plants leeks and daffodils symbols of the country. Both monocots in order Asparagales, family Amaryllidaceae. One a tasty vegetable, the other poisonous to humans! @botanyjohninaber.bsky.social

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌴🍂🌳🐝🪳 Events in Botanical University Challenge #BUC2026 now pause until August, when the 4 teams with top scores on Day 3 meet in person for quarterfinal and final! Aberdeen, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Anglia Ruskin. Recordings of Days 1 - 3 on our YouTube channel QR code.

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌴🍂🌳🐝🪳 Mega exciting contest yesterday in Botanical University Challenge #BUC2026, finding the 4 semifinalists - teams Aberdeen, Cambridge, Edinburgh & Anglia Ruskin Universities. 2 tie-breaker rounds! Competition for best team names by public vote still open. Use QR code to go and vote.

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌴🍂🌳🐝🪳Finally! 50 questions, technical hitch, 2 tiebreaker rounds - and the semifinalists #BUC2026 are teams from Aberdeen, Cambridge, Edinburgh and Anglia Ruskin universities! Four other teams snapping at their heels - Bangor, York, UCL and RBG Edinburgh. See you in August!!

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌴🍂🌳🐝🪳 Botanical University Challenge #BUC2026 goes out of this world! Plants growing in space!! Astrobotany. And most teams know what hormones affect the way roots respond to gravity!

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌴🍂🌳🐝🪳All going well for most teams after round 1 of Botanical University Challenge, about mosses, fungi and things! #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌴🍂🌳🐝🪳 Watch Day 3 - quarterfinal of Botanical University Challenge #BUC2026 streaming now YouTube. www.youtube.com/watch?v=xe6m...

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌴🍂🌳🐝🪳Dr Karen Bacon, University of Galway @uniofgalway.bsky.social , Ireland, will ask the questions in Day 3 quarterfinal round of Botanical University Challenge #BUC2026 Watch on YouTube. botanicaluniversitychallenge channel.

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌴🍂🌳🐝🪳 Last on-line round of Botanical University Challenge #BUC2026 this week. Fifteen teams competing for 4 semifinal places. Which ones will be in the live events in August? Watch from 14:00 Wednesday 25 February to find out!

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌴🍂🌳🐝🪳Karrikins: characterised in 21st century from long-known fact some plants need smoke to stimulate germination. Most #BUC2026 knew this! Karrikins perceived by plant protein KAI2 found even in Arabidopsis, so maybe have role in all plants.

What does Mr P Cuttings think of Essential plant biology, a new textbook for plant biology? Find out at plantcuttings.uk/2026/02/20/t... Cheers! #Botany #PlantScience

Know any botanists in Wales who'd like to join our lovely botanical team? The deadline is this Monday (23 Feb)- so apply soon! @cedar-ni.bsky.social @bangoruniscience.bsky.social @treborthbg.bsky.social @aberuni.bsky.social @irishwildlife.bsky.social @peatlandcymru.bsky.social @manxpeat.bsky.social

Botanical University Challenge 2026 underway (quarterfinal 25 February, finals in August!). Full information on #BUC2027 available in autumn. See botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk @jicstudentvoice.bsky.social

Poinsettias sold for Christmas are worth over $250 million in USA alone. Question about how to make poinsettias red was more tricky for teams in Botanical University Challenge #BUC2026.

@pennyhundleby.bsky.social Indeed, John Innes Centre is one place in UK without a team in Botanical University Challenge 2026 but where lots of plant degrees and research happens! Maybe a team in 2027??

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🧪🌳🐝 Where to study degrees focusing on plants in UK and Ireland? Teams in #BUC2026 made single image of BSc/Masters/PhD opportunities at their 32 institutions. Great to get so much information about plant degrees together. (Also plants at some other places without a team this year!)

🌍🌱🌻🌾🌿🌳🐞🪳🐌 What were questions like on Day 2 Botanical University Challenge #BUC2026? Most teams knew the answer to this one, where fungal individuals living on wood create zone line deposits around themselves resulting in patterns - spalted wood. @botanyjohninaber.bsky.social