Botany

Produced by the MAdLand consortium and made publically accessible via Zenodo. The series was presented in exhibition form in several botanical gardens across Germany this summer. Only this German version exists, unfortunately.

Guide to ID UK buttercups: https://botsocscot.wordpress.com/2020/06/06/three-of-our-common-buttercups-telling-them-apart/

A wonderful guide for long car rides.

Apologies for the silly clickbait headline.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/986772

Let's see how many interesting facts about beans we can bring together.

Pythagoras’s aversion to beans, though, always got a lot of attention, even from ancient writers. According to Pliny, Pythagoreans believed that fava beans could contain the souls of the dead, since they were flesh-like. Due to their black-spotted flowers and hollow stems, some believers thought the plants connected earth and Hades, providing ladders for human souls. The beans’ association with reincarnation and the soul made eating fava beans close to cannibalism. Aristotle, writing earlier, went much further. One possible reason for the ban, he wrote, was that the bulbous shape of beans represented the entire universe. Nevertheless, other Greeks ate plenty of fava beans, and Pythagorean beliefs were mocked. The poet Horace tauntingly called beans “relations of Pythagoras.”

"The conservation of the genetic resources of old trees is crucial to their ecological role but is extremely difficult, especially for oak species (Quercus spp.) displaying recalcitrance in seed and vegetative propagation methods. Our study aimed to assess the regenerative potential of Quercus robur trees of different ages (up to 800 years) during micropropagation. We also aimed to determine how in vitro conditions can influence in vitro regeneration responses.[..]"