Botany – The Conversation

New Zealand has 2,200 native flowering plants and 85% of them grow nowhere else, including some spectacular displays that open just in time for the festive season.

Is an organism a sum of its parts, or should they be considered as a whole? New research on ferns shows how the way scientists understand evolution affects how they study life.

Most of us just take it for granted. But bark is one of the most complex parts of a tree and has many different jobs to do.

This episode explores how colonial history has affected what we plant and who gets to garden. We also discuss practical gardening tips with an eye to Indigenous knowledge.

Tannin stains on concrete, cars and decks may be unsightly, but that doesn’t mean tannins are unimportant.

It makes great sense many plants flower when the insects and birds so vital to their reproductive success are also getting busier (and getting busy).

As cost-of-living soars, wars rage and stock markets fluctuate, we could all use a respite. The natural world has been proven to have a healing effect.

An archaeologist reveals what she learned from sifting through a 200-year-old rat nest recovered from a historic Philadelphia home.

Mulch glue allows water and air to penetrate the soil, but there are concerns it may limit birds turning over and foraging in mulch.

Rsearch fellow Laura Cinti talks to The Conversation Weekly podcast about her quest to find a female version of the endangered E. woodii cycad using drones and AI.

Botanist Paul Ashton explains the difference between trees that lose their leaves, and those that don’t on The Conversation’s Curious Kids podcast.

Decades of experimentation revealed slow ecological processes and long-term interactions that have international scientific value.

Faced with the collapse of biodiversity, there is an urgent need to protect the genetic diversity of species. But to preserve fruit trees, seed banks are not enough.

When it comes to a battle of persistence between a weed and a human, the weed will win most of the time. That is one of the things that makes a weed a weed.

Squamellaria plants grow special structures to host the ants they symbiotically rely on for nutrients. Distinct compartments help different ant colonies live peacefully side by side.

Is your compost a veritable Vesuvius of foul-smelling, putrescible plant waste? You might be doing everything wrong. Fear not; you can learn from your mistakes.

Most of the plants we know and admire were named after white, western men. Indigenous knowledge has been largely absent from the field of botany.

A distinctive local variety of grapevine from Ethiopia’s Tigray region could offer potential as a dryland crop.

If you are keen to see your cabbage tree palm flower, be aware it may take 150-170 years. If you can wait that long, it usually happens between August and October.