Botanical snippets for April

A few planty things spotted on Twitter this week via the BSBI official Twitter account @BSBIbotany 

If you read the news about the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, on the BBC website recently, you may also be interested in this petition.

The three-part BBC series 'Botany: a blooming history', first shown in 2011, is to be repeated. It starts this Thursday and will be on iPlayer here. Watch out for the sections on Linnaeus and John Ray! Or listen again to Radio 4 programme 'The Botanists' here - 15 minutes on the Millennium Seed Bank.

Want to know more about mapping habitats to describe ecosystems? Click here. 

A new plant conservation course at Bangor University flags up its secret weapon: their herbarium! Under the headline 'Unique herbarium to be resource to train future plant conservationists', the webpage tells us: "The new MSc course aims to redress a shortage of experts needed to conserve our plant resources for the future. 

"This is in response to a growing acknowledgement that a decline in training opportunities in botanical sciences over the last two decades has led to a shortage of scientists with plant conservation skills and knowledge".

Over at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, a project called PROTREE has been launched to find a long-term strategy for tree health.

Some "botanical art" from San Fransiscan artist Alexis Anne Mackenzie

And the third link of the day to Linnaeus - have you ever wished that you could look through his plant specimens? Now you can - click here to browse virtually.

Images on this page are by Claudia Ferguson-Smyth but she did not select any of them for the new cover of New Journal of Botany, so this may be the only chance you ever have to see them. Enjoy this fleeting glimpse ;-)