Botanical University Challenge

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡 Best memories of Botanical University Challenge #BUC2026? Happy people sharing their plant knowledge and enthusiasm. Students, industry professionals, academics from around the UK and Ireland - all with botany an important part of their lives. Looking forward to #BUC2027!!

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍂🖌🐡🥜Birds store seeds. Acorn woodpeckers put acorns in custom-made holes in trees, while jays bury them in the ground. Which location gives an acorn hope of a future life as a tree? #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍂🖌🐡🥜Some plants use animals to scatter their seeds, exploiting the animal's behaviour to cache food stores. How successful? #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍂🖌🐡Seed dispersal is really important to plants. So there are many strategies & forms of seeds, and many terms for them. What is a diaspore? The entire dispersal unit that contains seeds, along with anything that helps it disperse. Diaspores can be very small, or enormous. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍂🍃🖌🐡🍎🍏🍐More Autumn/Fall traditions - harvest apples and pears (Malus and Pyrus sp.) Many more varieties than in large-scale commercial production, with different flavours/flavors, keeping and cooking qualities. Originating Central Asia, now grown in temperate regions worldwide #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍂🍃🖌🐡Pewen, Chile pine, Araucaria araucana - called the monkey puzzle tree in the UK. From South America, dioecious, evergreen with long-lived leaves. The video tell more! #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍂🍃🖌🐡 #Autumn has arrived! Leaves changing colour and falling from trees. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌎🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡Passiflora. Genus, about 550 species from neotropical Americas, Asia & Australasia, most growing as vines with tendrils. Many species have spectacular flowers, and/or flavoursome fruit. Feature of flowers is an androgynophore, central column with stamens and pistil attached. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡Plants and flowers have long been inspiration for decorations in homes and public buildings. The ceramic tiles filling the walls of Cardiff Free Library, Wales, are in designs based on plants. Practical and attractive wall covering. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡Questions in Botanical University Challenge also include plants from literature. Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry has classes in herbology and potion-making with lots of scope for plants. Which of these plants does not feature in theHarry Potter series of books? #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡 In 2024, Botanical University Challenge held a competition for botanical limericks! You can still hear them on our YouTube channel, introduced by Dr Jonathan Mitchley! Voting finished by April 2024. University of Dundee won, with Anglia Ruskin runner-up. www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvgt...

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡 Gympie-gympie, stinging tree, suicide plant. One of the nettle family Urticaceae from Australian coastal rainforests. Germinates in gaps, so around roads and tree felling. Notorious for its extremely painful and long-lasting sting, where pain can last for months. #BUC2026

Corn dollies were traditionally made across Europe at harvest time, using the tall and hollow-stemmed wheat varieties grown before the 'Green Revolution' of the 1950s and 60s. They may have originated in pre-Christian religions. Now they are made as attractive country crafts. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡We think of insects, especially bees, as pollinators. But what has this cheeky bat been up to? Yes, licking up nectar and getting covered in pollen! Some plants have designed their flowers to attract bats and for these mammals to be their pollinators. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡 What to do about invasive plants? Skunk cabbage, nice native plant in American Pacific Northwest, attractive garden plant around water in Europe (despite strong smell from flowers) - but can move to UK countryside and thrive - invasive plant! www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... #BUC2026

Most of us eat and use Gum Arabic (E414) without being aware of what it is and where it comes from? Do you know where Gum Arabic comes from? A past question from Botanical University Challenge! #BUC2026 #food

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡 #UKFungusDay What better at the start of autumn than fungi? From iconic large multicoloured mushrooms to tiny, weeny, hardly visible ones, time for fungi to get spreading their spores. Want to know more about fungi? Why not try @britmycolsoc.org.uk as a start - local groups, workshops?

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡 How do trees prepare for leaves to drop off in autumn/fall? How can you tell when a leaf is ready to go? Organised process - abscission! #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡 Annual Europe-wide contest for Tree of the Year. UK entry is The Bendy Tree, a wind-sculpted wych elm, probably planted along the seafront promenade in mid-1800s. #BUC2026 www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-...

6🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡 Where do perfumes, fragrances, aftershave come from? Some components are from wild plants. Chemical synthesis can replace some, getting better. Also the understanding of how humans perceive scents. Can AI take this further? #BUC2026 www.theguardian.com/science/2026...

🌿🌾🌳🌍🍞🎼Jonathan Mitchley's family have told us they would like to share information about his funeral & donations in his memory. The botanical community has lost a champion. He touched so many lives for the better. www.abwalker.co.uk/funeral/jona... #BUC2016 - #BUC2026 #plants #music

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡 So what is this mysterious plant from the Saxifragaceae, that favours growing in the west of Britain and especially Ireland? St Patrick's Cabbage, Cabáiste an mhadra rua, Saxifrage spathularis. #BUC2026

All you Need to know about the Monkey Puzzle !! and How you can add one to the UK National Survey see youtu.be/1CeNJEAsl5Y

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡 Some African species of Acacia have lipid-rich detachable tips on the pinnules (leaflets) of leaves. They are believed to have evolved in a symbiotic relationship with ants. What is the name of these tips? #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡Wildlife now on tunnelling spoil from HS2, become scarce nutrient-poor chalk grassland not previous high quality agricultural land. Includes knapweed, wild carrot, lady's bedstraw, pyramidal orchid - and insects & birds that need these plants. #BUC2026 www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡 Genus Coffea, family Rubiaceae. C. arabica (Arabica coffee) and C. canephora (Robusta coffee) are major world crops. Originates highlands now Ethiopia and Sudan. C. arabica is a natural hybrid between C. canephora & C. eugenioides. #BUC2026 #NationalCoffeeDay

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡 Another distinguished botanist at University of Reading. Vernon Heywood, plant taxonomist & conservationist. Iberian flora specialist. Associated with Flora Europea (documented 11,000 vascular plant species 1964 - 2001), founded Botanic Gardens Conservation International www.bgci.org

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡 This northern Scottish grassland is covered in buds for flowers that are a late summer treat in UK & Ireland chalk/limestone/alkaline grassland. But what genus do they belong to? (Seed-heads of a different genus & species near front of photo - bonus points for its name!) #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡 Some fruits & vegetables are now eaten all over the world, like onions, while other are little-known outside their home region. This green fruit is still mainly grown in their central American home, but is part of a more widely appreciated cuisine. What is it? #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡Beautiful autumnal flowers and fruits in grassland in northern Scotland. But what are the names of the flowering and fruiting plants? #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡 Plant flavours often originally evolved to protect plants from predators - animals and insects that liked to eat them! The strong flavour of cabbages, now reduced by plant breeders, so more palatable to humans, is an example. But what enzyme is a key part of the flavour system? #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡Insects can rely on specific plant species. Ivy flowers September - November. The solitary ivy bees emerge at same time to use this pollen & nectar. Arrived from Europe in UK 2001, moving N and W, now just reaching Ireland. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡 Of course, a lot of different species of insects eat plants, which interests some botanists. That combined knowledge has an application in plant protection for agriculture and horticulture. #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌲🌿🍃🖌🐡 New knowledge in plant taxonomy changes ideas on which ones are most closely related. How about this long-known seaweed that turns out to be in the sea lettuce genus. What was its previous, or common, name? #BUC2026

🌱🌾🌺🌿🍫🌎🖌#InternationChocolateDay One of at least 4 international celebrations of chocolate. Essential ingredient is roasted, ground beans (seeds) from cacao tree (Theobroma cacao). Originates from tropical regions of South America, now also grown elsewhere like Ivory Coast, Ghana, Indonesia. #BUC2026

It's #InternationalChocolateDay! Did you know that chocolate is toxic to dogs? 🐶 Or that some chocolate contains butyric acid, also found in vomit? 🤮 More chocolate chemistry in this updated edition of #PeriodicGraphics in @cenmag.bsky.social 👇 #ChemSky 🧪

Exactly the seaweed in the picture.