#BUC2024

Photo some of student from teams from Aberdeen, Aberystwyth, Anglia Ruskin, Bristol, Cambridge, Dundee, Durham, Eden, Edge Hill, Edinburgh, Galway, Harper Adams, Imperial College London, Lancaster, Manchester, Nottingham, Oxford, Oxford Brookes, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Reading, Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, RHS Rosemoor, Southampton, Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin, York!! Group photo before going to workshop about flower structure; tour of Oxford Botanic Gardens led by Chris Thorogood; Lecture audience.

🌱🌾🌍🍄🌿Seventh Botanical University Challenge #BUC2024. Three afternoons in February when 28 teams compete for live semifinal in August at Oxford, followed by Second Student Botany Festival. Workshops, careers fair, botanical research talks, visits arboretum, botanic garden. Hours networking.

Picture love-in-a-mist and 5 possible scientific names. Which is the right one? a. Ranunculus acris b. Nigella lawsonii c. Nigella damascena d. Amorea scotica e. Amaranthus caudatus

🌾🌱🌍🌿🍄🌺❤️ 14 February, St Valentine's Day. Say it with flowers! And which is more beautiful than love-in-a-mist (sadly not in flower in UK & Ireland in February)? But what is its scientific name? A question to #BUC2024 contestants last year. Can you pick the correct answer? @bsbibotany.bsky.social

Pictures from Calum McLennan (Lichen Agaric, Bladder Wrack), Louisa Mammalis (Bloodlily), Kian Hayles-Cotton (Prickly Pear, Gray Witch's Hair, Capillary Thread-moss), Finn Harrigan (Scruffy Scalycap), Jake Dalzell (Peronospora fulva) and Jess Duffy (Pacaya Palm). Also map UK and Ireland showing where BUC group had added/reviewed records.

🌍🌾🌱🍄🧪🌺🌳Really interesting showing value of citizen science like iNaturalist alongside herbaria & other data. Needs people knowledgeable on ID. Students who competed in Botanical University Challenge #BUC2024 now in iNaturalist group to add and review records. Great to involve keen young people.

'Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Garden' by John Constable, completed 1823. The white stone athedral with a tall spire, is in right half of the painting. Part of the chancel concealed by trees on the left. The cathedral sits among short green grass. Dark, almost stormy sky with white clouds above. One tree in full leaf on either side of the cathedral frame it, with a third, shorter tree filling space on left side of the painting. A small pond with cattle drinking from it is at the front of the painting. Yellow water lily flowers are visible above the water on the left side of the pond.

Yellow water lily flowers are visible above the water on the left side of the pond.

🌍🖌🌿🌼🏵🌾Plants feature in background of paintings, but sometimes can be identified. Pond at front has yellow water lily flowers (Nuphar lutea) visible above the water on the left side. By John Constable, 1823,
'Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Garden'. High culture Botany? #BUC2024

Picture of old tree and wood core taken from it for dating.Read more at https://botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/

🌍🌾🌱🍄The Thymes, newsletter of Botanical University Challenge #BUC2024 includes students writing about their botanical interests. Here, #dendrochronology. Read more at botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/

Looking forward to catching up with the fabulous @drmgoeswild.bsky.social at tomorrow's British & Irish Botanical Conference!
He's giving a flash talk & a poster about Botanical University Challenge & several #BUC2024 participants are also exhibiting.
Can't wait!

Picture of low growing, pink-flowered plant on hillside with rugged rocky volcano cone behind. Blue sky.

🌾🌍🌱🌿🌺Students writing in latest newsletter #BUC2024 about places they've been, plants they've seen. Iceland has beautiful flowers in rugged landscape. Read the whole article at botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/

Picture of young man with rows and rows of boxes holding dried fungal specimens behind him. Second photo of some of specimens on a trolly being taken for DNA profiling. Text around pictures about work of Fungarium. Read full article at https://botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/ Image credit: Kew/Finn Harrigan

🌾🌍🌱🍄🌿🌳🌺🧪Articles in latest newsletter #BUC2024 by students who competed in it. What is a Fungarium? Read about RBG Kew's Fungarium and work on taxonomy, identification and distribution of fungi. Download the whole article at botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/

Wordcloud of what student attendees thing of Botanical University Challenge and Second Student Botany Festival 2024. See video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8vXre9Gh74 Download newsletter of what they wrote at https://botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/

🌾🌍🌱🌿🍄🌳🌺🧪Read what students thought of #BUC2024 and Second Student Botany Festival at Oxford Botanic Garden & Arboretum this year in November newsletter from Botanical University Challenge. Video at youtube.com/watch?v=x8vX...

Second Student Botany Festival in 1 minute on YouTube! If you were there, can you spot yourself? #BUC2024

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMl0...

Diagram of a flower with parts labelled, female organ in more detail.

Diagram of a typical flower to show names for typical parts.

Close up diagram of male part of flower, with components of stamen labelled.

🌾🌍🌱🍄🌿🌺 What names work for the bits of flowers of most plants? Diagrams with names! #BUC2024

De Morgan tiles, blue carnation design with swirl of green foliage behind. Also photos real carnations to show shape and side views. Double carnation tile panel, Caryophyllaceae, Rotational symmetry, Produced 1872 – 1907

William De Morgan designs, blue Daisy tile panel, Asteraceae, Ovals and circles, Produced 1872 – 1907. Also real members of Asteraceae to show side and face views.

🌾🌺🌿🌱🖌️🌻🌷Flower shapes inspire. William De Morgan (1839 - 1917) ceramic artist Arts & Crafts Movement used their symmetry and his mathematical knowledge in his designs. Father, brother, friends were mathematicians. However, poor business sense ended production. #BUC2024 demorgan.org.uk/discover/the...

Image of plant with clusters of drooping bell-like purple flowers. Slender spear-shaped green leaves. Also photo of a flower cut in half showing pale purple scales and yellow anthers within.

🌾🌍🌱🌿🌺Above a plant covered in harsh hairs like bristles (hispid), the dingy purple flowers of common comfrey (Symphytum officinale) conceal more attractive stamens alternating with corolla-scales within a tube of 5 fused petals. #BUC2024 @bsbibotany.bsky.social

Magenta flowers with highly dissected plamate leaves.

🌱🌾🌻🌳🌍 Bloody cranesbill (Geranium sanguineum) bright magenta flowers. Pretty palmate leaves. Locally common on natural limestone like cliffs and pavements & nearby grassland, scrub, sands. Derbyshire, Burren, Avon Gorge, Gower, Great Orme, Ingleborough. Also garden plant. #BUC2024

Three pictures - celery, celeriac, celery leaves

🌾🌍🌱🌿🧪Apium graveolens. Better known as celery (crunchy, tasty leaf stems), celeriac (expanded tasty hypocotyl, keeps well overwinter), celery leaves (varieties grown for leaf production) and celery seed (flavouring). All from one species originating in Mediterranean and Europe area. #BUC2024

Image of top of a pilaster, decoration like a column but not supportive, on a building in Paris, France. Decoration is inspired by leaves of plant genus Acanthus. Curling, dissected, spiky leaves.

Photo of plant Acanthus mollis. Many English names (bear's breeches, sea dock, bear's foot plant, sea holly, gator plant or oyster plant]. Shape of leaf inspires acanthus decoration at top of columns, pilasters, and so on in architecture.

🌍🌾🌱🌳🍁Plant shapes inspire people. Greek sculptor Callimachus (5th century BCE) inspired by Acanthus genus for top of Corinthian style column. Re-used in Europe by Romans, Renaissance, Gothic, Gothic Revival architecture ever since. #BUC2024
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callima...

Brown spiky flowerheads.

🌾🌍🌱🌺In autumn & winter, dead flowerheads remain on plants. However even the freshest summer flowers of carline thistle ( Carlina vulgaris, Asteraceae) look dead! They look and feel dry and spiky. Grows in limestone and chalk areas, poor soils, unimproved grassland, England, Wales, Ireland. #BUC2024

Basket of apples with variety written on each

Turnip carved into lantern with a face

Two pumpkins carved into lanterns with a face. Lit and glowing orange in darkness

🌍🌱🌾🍂🍁🌼 Many traditions around the world for 31 October. Halloween in British Isles involves many plants. Apple bobbing, carving lanterns with faces from swedes (turnip, rutabaga, Brassica napus) or, more conveniently, pumpkins (Cucurbita sp.). #BUC2024

Labelled diagram of a grass flower

🌍🌱🌾🌺🏵 Extra words needed for some flowers, like grasses, which have distinctive bits. #BUC2024

🌾🌍🌱🍄🌿🍂🍁Leaves falling from trees in autumn. Abscission zone lets leaves fall when everything useful in them has been stored safely away. Hear more from Jonathan Mitchley, University of Reading #BUC2024, on BBC Radio South youtu.be/5kjzU-LKxdU

Student talks with slide in background

Second Student Botany Festival had undergraduate, Masters & PhD students in ecology, horticulture, plant sciences, even botany (Ireland), mixing to talk about their experiences of plants at university. Informative and sociable. Here, mature undergraduate at University of Reading. #BUC2024

Student standing talking to a slide about botany interests in environmental modelling.

More of the diversity of interests at Second Student Botany Festival in August 2024. 60 seconds and 1 slide about large data project on environmental modelling from student at University of Aberdeen. They spoke so well and their enthusiasm shone out! #BUC2024

Student with one slide of CAM plants.

🌍🌾🌱☘️🌻After #BUC2024 in August came 2nd Student Botany Festival. Opened with students talking with one slide about their botanical enthusiasms. Here, Trinity College Dublin undergrad about CAM plants.

Five students, oneholding large wooden cup trophy.

🌾🌍🌱🌿🍄Winners of Botanical University Challenge #BUC2024 with the Sid Thomas trophy. The Backs Buttercups team from University of Cambridge. Name being inscribed on the trophy. Watch out for #BUC2025! Where will the final beheld??

🌾🌍🌱🍄🌿Prizes and applause for winners of the photography and art competition run alongside Botanical University Challenge #BUC2024. Impressive work from university students across the UK and Ireland. @bsbibotany.bsky.social @newphyt.bsky.social

Team of 4 students smiling. Text much as the the post.

🌾🌍🌱🍄🌿Prizes and applause for team Take It or Leaf It from University of York who led throughout Botanical University Challenge #BUC2024 but just lost in the final. @bsbibotany.bsky.social @oxfordbiology.bsky.social

Picture of part of The Queens College, Oxford. Overlaid picture Prof Lindsay Turnbull, coco de mer/double coconut fruit and early plants.

🌾🌍🌱🍄🌿Questions in final Botanical University Challenge #BUC2024 asked by Lindsay Turnbull, Professor of Plant Ecology, University of Oxford. Held live in August at the Queens College and Botanic garden. @oxfordbiology.bsky.social @queensoxbiology.bsky.social @bsbibotany.bsky.social

Team of 4 students round a table. Screen behind has picture Senecio squalidus, Oxford ragwort.

🌾🌍🌱🍄🌿Live plant question on Oxford ragwort in final Botanical University Challenge #BUC2024 to team Backs Buttercups from University of Cambridge. Arrived Oxford Botanic Garden and Arboretum
from Sicily 1702 & 1719. Grows on scree in mountains Sicily, and now around the world in similar habitats.

Team of 4 people sitting at a table with a logo of flower surrounded by 2 leaves or hands on screen behind them.

🌾🌱🌼🌳🍄🌍Team debating over which organisation has this logo. A question in the final Botanical University Challenge #BUC2024 this August.

Picture of Great Glasshouse National Botanic Garden of Wales Gardd Fotaneg Genedlaethol Cymru, and Director Lucy Sutherland. The great glasshouse has a huge single curved span of glass over oval shaped building.

🌾🌍🌱🍄🌿Questions semi-final #BUC2024 asked by Dr Lucy Sutherland, Director National Botanic Garden of Wales/Gardd Fotaneg Genedlaethol Cymru. Students did not know the answer to a question about this garden used in a Dr Who story. Which one? @susieoftraken.bsky.social