STOP PRESS: BUC 2026 crowdfunding is LIVE! BUC is UK & Ireland’s biggest boldest, leafiest student botany celebration🌿Our students say their knowledge shoots up, careers grow and the BUC community inspires them. Please follow the link to support us ty! 👉 reading.hubbub.net/p/botanicalu...

STOP PRESS: BUC 2026 crowdfunding is LIVE! BUC is UK & Ireland’s biggest boldest, leafiest student botany celebration🌿Our students say their knowledge shoots up, careers grow and the BUC community inspires them. Please follow the link to support us ty! 👉 reading.hubbub.net/p/botanicalu...

Agreed! There are hardly any places left doing Plant Biology now in the UK. We kind of need it for the future.....

My students have set up a petition to persuade the University of Nottingham not to close our Plant Biology BSc course c.org/VPhzVVrHPS Please consider signing

Funnily enough, Birmingham has strengthened its plant sciences group in the School of Biosciences.

I know. Over here everyone wants to do sports science. Fine, but you only need so many people doing that. And yes, if you take plant science and are halfway decent you will get a good job. Only up side is ancient people like me are still needed!?!

🌱🌾🌍🌺🌳🐝 Students write about their planty enthusiasms in newsletter of Botanical University Challenge #BUC2026. Latest issue has lichens, plant-fungal-bacterial symbiosis. Get introduced to them! botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/ More on lichens: britishlichensociety.org.uk

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿🐝🍂 Team from University of Sheffield in Botanical University Challenge first time 2025. Read 'The Sheffield Sporangia' experience in the competition's newsletter, The Thymes. Read more at the QR code or: botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/ More new teams #BUC2026?

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿🐝🪳 The core of Botanical University Challenge #BUC2026 is the plant knowledge quiz. See multiple-choice tie-breaker in this year's semifinal. Galls likely for larvae wasp Diplolepis spinosissimae. www.britishplantgallsociety.org Example questions every copy BUC newsletter. Follow QR code.

When and where for Botanical University Challenge #BUC2026? Online 11, 18 & 25 February to select semifinalists from all the teams. Then finals 19 August live at University of Reading. Also 4th Student Botany Festival to 21 August, open to all members of #BUC2026 teams. @drmgoeswild.bsky.social

🌸🌱🌾🌳🪾🍂🐛🐝 Horse chestnut Aesculus hippocastanum, family Sapindaceae. Elegant palmate leaves, tall spikes of large pink-white flowers. In autumn the spiky green fruits with shiny brown seeds, conkers. Used in UK & Ireland for a children's game. Also in early biotechnology to produce acetone. #BUC2026

🌾🌱⚘️🌿🌼🦠🚀 #BUC2026 Impressive survival of moss spores, Physcomitrella patens (spreading earthmoss) on outside of International Space Station for 9 months! Vacuum, radiation, dry, too much light, cold. Over 80% germinated when back on Earth. www.cell.com/iscience/ful...

🌍🌸🌻🌱🌾🌳🪾🍁🥀 New today! Plant of the week from Jess, Izzy & Niamh, all students who have competed in Botanical University Challenge. They have chosen a very seasonal plant for today, the rowan, also called mountain ash. Now often grown in gardens or street tree in UK and Ireland. #BUC2026

Someone needs to clean their space station

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🐝 Ginkgo (maidenhair tree, Ginkgo biloba) from East Asia. Last living member of a plant order that evolved over 290 million years ago. Humans have cultivated it for centuries. Attractive fan-shaped leaves, bright yellow in autumn before fall off. ##BUC2026

A beautiful ginkgo in my park last week

🌏🌱🌴🌿🌾🌺🍄🌲🌳 Sago palm or cycad, Cycas revoluta. looks like a palm tree but is a gymnosperm. From Japan originally, now the most widely cultivated cycad. One of several plants used to produce sago. Also grown for its attractive ornamental character. Needs warm or subtropical climate. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🌿🍁🌏🌎 Coriander, cilantro, used around world in cookery. Leaves & seeds with rather citrus-like flavour & fragrance to many people. Olefactory receptor protein allows us to perceive coriander flavour. Some variations in gene (OR6A2) mean coriander tastes unpleasant, soap & vomit. #BUC2026

🌾🌱⚘️🌿🌼🦠 How to make street furniture more attractive. Box of telephone connections - but plants and butterflies! #BUC2026

🌸🌼🌿🌱🥬🥦🌾🌍 18th century teapots - decorated to look like cauliflowers! #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌺🌿🌷🌻Illustrations inspired by Curtis's Botanical Magazine (started 1787 and still going strong!), painted by Thomas Pardoe around 1805 on creamware from Cambrian Pottery, Swansea, UK. #BUC2026

🌍🌸🌻🌱🌾🌳🪾🍁🥀 Plant of the week from Jess, Izzy & Niamh, all students involved with Botanical University Challenge. Red dead nettle - downy not a stingy & grows in most of UK and Ireland #BUC2026

🌍🌸🌻🌱🌾🌳🪾🍁🥀 Botanical University Challenge at the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland conference @bsbibotany.bsky.social at Edge Hill University, Merseyside today. #BUC2026

Great talk from @bucbotany.bsky.social at the #BIBConf25. What an amazing thing. I wish this had been around when I was at uni!

🌱🌾🌍🌺🌳🌲🌿🎄❄️Starting with music! Everyone's favourite Christmas plant - holly! Shiny green leaves, bright red berries. Gorgeous!! Izzy, Jess and Niamh starting to get us all in the mood for the big event, only about three weeks away! #BUC2026 #plants #loveplants #christmas #advent #botany

🌱🌾🌍🌺🌳🌲🌿🎄❄️ And here's Advent Botany Day 2! The Christmas Rose. Looks like a rose, but completely different plant family, poisonous and flowers different time of year!! Let Izzy, Jess and Niamh tell you about it. #BUC2026 #plants #loveplants #Advent #Christmas #flowers

🌱🌾🌍🌺🌳🌲🌿🎄❄️ Advent Botany Day 3! Let Izzy, Jess and Niamh tell you about it. Hazel, Corylus avellana, treasured for its large tasty nuts and straight shoots useful as poles (from coppicing-style growth). #BUC2026 #plants #loveplants #Advent #Christmas #flowers

🌱🌾🌍🌺🌷🌿🌻🐝 Flowers in winter important on cool but sunny days. Rosemary flowers (Salvia rosmarinus) with nectar & pollen for buff-tailed bumblebee queen Bombus terrestris. Egg-laying & caring for larvae. Important commercial pollinators in glass house crops. #BUC2026 #plants #loveplants #bees

🌍🌾🌱🌳🌲❄️🍷Advent Botany Day 4! Another winter tradition in UK and Ireland; flavouring alcohol with fruit, specifically from blackthorn. Sloe gin! Let Jess, Izzy and Niamh tell you more!! #BUC2026 #Christmas

🌱🌾🌍🌺🌳🌲🌿🎄❄️ Day 5 of Advent. What have Niamh, Izzy and Jess got for us today? Walnuts! More tasty tree seeds, and more folk stories. #BUC2026 #Christmas #Advent #Xmas #walnut #plants #trees #loveplants

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿🧪❄️🎄Day 6 of Advent Botany! The spindle tree that has such pretty seeds. One of a genus with over 140 members that originate all around the world. Jess, Izzy and Niamh tell you more! #BUC2026 #AdventBotany #Christmas #plants #shrubs #loveplants

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿🧪❄️🎄Advent Botany Day 7 - carrots! Delicious vegetable raw or cooked, hot or cold, prominent with a roast or invisible within stew. And not only at Christmas. Let Jess, Izzy and Niamh tell you more in their reel. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🧪🌳🐝Botanical University Challenge 2026! Teams universities & plant-related institutions UK & Ireland starting to sign-up. University Southampton has competed most years since BUC started 2016! Look out what is happening at your university or organisation. #BUC2026 @unisouthampton.bsky.social

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿🧪❄️🎄Day 8 Advent Botany – cranberries. Several species across northern hemisphere and one with a particularly large fruit originating east coast North America. Fruit for Christmas, juice all year round! Niamh, Izzy & Jess will tell you more. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿🧪❄️🎄 Advent Botany Day 9! Another iconic Christmas plant - ivy. Still covered in leaves & berries. Often flowering in winter, important for pollen & nectar. Fascinating example of a plant with different shapes of leaves on different parts. Niamh, Jess and Izzy tell you more! #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿❄️🎄 Advent Botany day 10 - pear trees. First line of song known from northern England 1700s with many changes since. Counting songs associated with Christmas across Europe. Read more from Jess, Izzy and Niamh! #BUC2026 #Christmasplants #AdventBotany #TwelvedaysofChristmas #plants #loveplants

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿Plants inspired artists & craftspeople for thousands of years. Curved leaves of Acanthus genus on stone columns supporting or decorating ancient Greek buildings. The motif has been reused on more recent buildings because of its aesthetic appeal. #BUC2026 #plants #loveplants

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿❄️🎄Advent Botany Day 11! Yew trees. Green all year round. Let Niamh, Izzy and Jess tell you more! #BUC2026 #trees #AdventBotany #Christmasplants #plants #loveplants

🌱🌾🌍🎄🌻🌳 Advent Botany Day 12 - gorse! Brilliant yellow flowers on vicious, spiky plant all year round. And their scent on a hot summer day - coconut - is so unexpected in the temperate European climate! Let Izzy, Jess & Niamh tell you more! #BUC2026 #Christmasplants #AdventBotany #plants #loveplants

🌱🌾🌍🎄🌻🌳Advent Botany Day 13 - chestnuts. Not only producing nuts that are delicious when cooked, but also large trees with for useful timber. Let Izzy, Jess and Niamh tell you more! #BUC2026 #AdventBotany #ChristmasPlants #plants #loveplants

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿❄️🎄Advent Botany Day 15 - Angelica by name and taste! Let Izzy, Jess and Niamh tell you about this aromatic plant! #BUC2026 #AdventBotany #ChristmasPlants #plants #loveplants

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿❄️🎄Advent Botany Day 17. A really special plant. Seems to be only found wild in one place in the World, the Great Orme in North Wales! Creigafal y Gogarth or (less glamourously) Wild Cotoneaster, Cotoneaster cambricus. A super rare plant. Jess, Izzy and Niamh tell you more. #BUC2026

Advent Botany Day 18. Nearing the Big Day so time to think of Christmas trees! Several evergreen trees species used in Europe. Norway spruce, Nordmann fir, Lodgepole pine .... More about Christmas trees from the Forestry Commission: www.forestryengland.uk/blog/the-exp... #BUC2026 #AdventBotany

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿❄️🎄Advent Botany Day 19 - onions! Brings sweetness and flavour/flavor to so many cooked foods!! Colourful/colorful red, brown and white bulbs. Mysterious why no scent until bulbs cut, then aroma so intense you cry! Let Niamh, Izzy and Jess tell you more about it. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿 About 40% of all food grown is destroyed by pests & disease before being eaten. Recent review suggests global heating allows pests to thrive in temperate climates like the US and Europe. Not good news for reducing food losses. More details: www.nature.com/articles/s43... #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿❄️🎄 Advent Botany Day 20 - thyme! Aromatic herb in cookery. Niamh, Izzy & Jess tell you more! Also, The Thymes is the name of the official newsletter of Botanical University Challenge. All issues: botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/ #BUC2026 #AdventBotany #ChristmasPlants #herbs

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿❄️🎄Advent Botany Day 21 - juniper. Smallish evergreen trees that can grow into beautiful shapes. Jess, Izzy and Niamh will tell you more! #BUC2026 #AdventBotany #ChristmasPlants #evergreentrees

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿❄️🎄Advent Botany Day 22 - reindeer moss! Santa Claus/Father Christmas gets closer ... Grows on the ground and an important food for reindeer/caribou, but Jess, Izzy and Niamh will tell you more about it - for example, not actually a moss. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿❄️🎄Traditional song '12 Days of Christmas' can be depicted in plants. For example, flowers of Great Burnet (Sanguisorba officinalis) are like drum-sticks. Line in song about drummers drumming. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿❄️🎄Advent Botany Day 23 - oak! Long-lived tree hosts many others! See database OakEcol for all 2,300 of UK oak's insects, lichens, bryophytes, birds, animals associations. Some rely on on oak, others more casual. Niamh, Izzy & Jess tell you more! #BUC2026 catalogue.ceh.ac.uk/documents/22...