By Meg Cathcart-James Juniperus communis is the most widespread of the juniper species. Juniperus is within the conifer family Cupressaceae. Whether as a small evergreen tree or a shrub, it…Read More >
#AdventBotany
#AdventBotany Day 22: Put a cork in it
By Ali Ayres It’s decided, 2017 is the year I finally contribute to this fine festive botanical blogging tradition. But what should I write about? Holly? Ivy? All the usual…Read More >
#AdventBotany Day 21: The qulliq brings light and heat to Canada’s Inuit Nunangat in the dark winter
By Dawn Bazely Christmas day at the North Pole is dark. In Inuit Nunangat, the Inuit homelands of Canada, the Arctic Circle (66.6 degrees), marks the latitude where the noon…Read More >
#AdventBotany Day 19: Christmas Kalanchoe – Kalanchoe blossfeldiana
By Will Simpson The genus Kalanchoe (the preferred pronunciation is kal-un-KOH-ee(1)) belongs to the Crassulaceae family. Like other members of this family, such as Aeonium, Crassula, Echeveria and Sedum, Kalanchoes…Read More >
#AdventBotany Day 18: Cyclamen persicum: a Christmas misnomer?
By Karen Andrews They say that you should never judge a book by its cover. Walter C. Blasdale’s ‘Cyclamen persicum: Its Natural and Cultivated Forms’ is an unassuming, concise volume…Read More >
#AdventBotany Day 15: A holiday pineapple for the table
By Katherine Preston and Jeanne Osnas (The Botanist in the Kitchen) This deep dive into pineapple anatomy is our contribution this year to the very fun Advent Botany essay collection,…Read More >
#AdventBotany Day 11: A Sloe Christmas
By Jonathan Mitchley (Dr M) This is Dr M’s contribution to #AdventBotany for 2017 the fourth fantastic year of this true botanical original originating from the School of Biological Sciences,…Read More >
#AdventBotany Day 8: Cultivating Christmas
By Mandeep Matharu & Louise O’Beirne As a kid brought up in India, perhaps my earliest memory of Christmas is looking up at one of my teachers dressed up as…Read More >
#AdventBotany Day 7: ‘like a Shoshana among the thorns’
By Robert Blackhall-Miles FLS Last year for advent botany I wrote about the Madonna lily (Lilium candidum) and its links to the Christmas story and the song of Solomon. This…Read More >
#AdventBotany Day 6: Fantastic Mastic
By Maria Christodoulou As we are entering the countdown to Christmas, preparations for the festive season reach new levels. For me, this usually involves a panicked trip to the shops…Read More >