🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🧪🌳🐝 Who will be asking the questions in Botanical University Challenge #BUC2026 in February? Dr Martin Barker, Aberdeen (team #BUC2025 winners !), Professor Yoselin Benitez-Alfonso, Leeds (team new arrival #BUC2025) & Dr Karen Bacon, Galway (first Irish team, #BUC2022) @yoselin.bsky.social

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🧪🌳🐝What was the Third Student Botany Festival like? See the highlights video on our YouTube channel!

Lively, informative, scientific, FUN!

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

#BUC2025 #plants #loveplants

Pictures of corn dollies - shapes like wreaths, bells horseshoes made from wheat stalks.

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌿🍁🍂 Autumn festivals and customs include making corn dollies from the stems of wheat, rye, oats and barley. Now both traditional forms originating in specific localities and new ones. #BUC2025

🪾🍂🍁🌳🌱🌾🌸🌼 Autumn/fall leaves. Once everything useful stored by tree/shrub, leaf itself has to go. Cells change so leaf breaks loose easily. Abscission zone. Deciduous tree now ready for winter storms. #BUC2025

Cross section through a leaf from USDA Forest Service showing where colours are. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Leaf_color_change.jpg

🪾🍂🍁🌳🌲🌼🌷🌱🌾🌹Leaves of deciduous trees change colour dramatically in autumn/fall. How? Why? Leaves contain coloured molecules needed for photosynthesis to capture light and power food supply to tree. Colder weather and shorter day length triggers changes. #BUC2025

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🐝How to get into Botany? We asked students at 3rd Botany Festival in August from 30 UK and Irish universities and other plant-focused institutions.

Andre Parise can't remember; Brazilian Atlantic rainforest has always been around him! Now doing PhD at University of Reading. #BUC2025

🪾🍂🍁🌳🌲🌼🌷🌱🌾🌹Another interesting row of street trees. Acers going yellow for autumn, but one does not follow the rest. Why? Different variety? Location? Younger? Just being stubborn? #BUC2025 #autumncolour

Brilliant read autumn color leaves on Acer sp. trees at side of road. Other trees, different species, still green or yellow leaves.

🪾🍂🌳🌲🌱🌾🍁 Amazing autumn color from street trees in #Manchester. They look on fire! Acer sp. Other species trees still green leaves or yellow. Sensing and response to the environment. #BUC2025

Yellow, pink, white, light red, dark red nasturtium flowers with some of their circular leaves in a blue and white jug. Watercolour painting.

🌱🪻🌹🌻🌺🌲🌴🌾☘️🪴Plants certainly inspire artists. Watercolour of nasturtiums by Phylis I. Hibbert, painted 1928. Displayed in The Harris, a magnificent museum in Preston, UK. theharris.org.uk Cabbage family (Brassicaceae). Leaves, flowers and fresh seed-pods are really tasty. #BUC2025

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🧪🌳🐝 What makes students study plants at university? Interest within family is often a big thing that gets them started, but then students find their own way. Listen to Lyd Taylor, Conservation Biology at University of Plymouth. In runner-up team, Botanical University Challenge #BUC2025.

Picture of bacon sandwich with HP Brown Sauce. The distinctive flavour of brown sauce is from tamarind. Which plant family is tamarind from? Five choices: Fabaceae, Polygonaceae, Rosaceae, Apiaceae, Brassicaceae. A question from a past Botanical University Challenge competition.

🌱🌾🌍🌺🌳🌿🌲🥕🥦 Here's a past Botanical University Challenge question: The distinctive flavour of brown sauce is from tamarind. Which plant family is tamarind from? Five choices: Fabaceae, Polygonaceae, Rosaceae, Apiaceae, Brassicaceae. #BUC2025

Thanks to all who donated generously pictures to Wikimedia Commons

🌱🌾🌍🌺🌿🌲🌴Botanical University Challenge #BUC2025 Who was the first woman botanist elected #FRS to Royal Society? Agnes Arber - in 1946! Royal Society started 1663. Botany was major area of science. How many other women should have been elected over the centuries. Much wasted talent!

Picture waxcap, inkcap, Boletus, ergot, smut, fly agaric. UK Fungus Day 2025

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🧪🌳🥜 Plant and fungi have so many close relationships: fungi making soil; mycorrhiza fungi feeding and being fed by plants; fungi recycling dead plants; fungi causing disease on plants. #BUC2025

🌱🌾🌺🌷🌿🌍🪳 How do students get into Botany. Santiago Castano Sirosi, University of Aberdeen team, winners of Botanical University Challenge #BUC2025 was inspired by plants around him as he grew up in Columbia. Need more lovely city plants in UK! We have some urban orchids!!

🌱🌾🌺🌷🌿🌍🪳 Student Amy Beach, studying Plant and Soil Science at University of Aberdeen - and in team winning Botanical University Challenge #BUC2025 - on what got her into Botany. Influence of father, gardening and being around nature. @drmgoeswild.bsky.social

🌾🌿🌴🌳🌲🪻🌷🪾🍄🌍🧪Wonderful to have a street tree as UK Tree of the Year. The Argyle Street Ash. Looks in good health. We need many more street trees. #BUC2025

Picture of young woman smiling at orchid flowers from a plant growing in a pot hanging from a branch against a wall in a glasshouse. Photo by Laura Bennetto/BUC

🌱🌾🌺🌷🌿🌍🪳 Third Student Botany Festival August 2025. After a workshop about orchids, say 'hullo' to one in a glasshouse at Cambridge University Botanic Garden @cubotanicgarden.bsky.social #BUC2025

Background of wood texture. Picture young botanical student from the Eden Project University Centre talking with botanist at Third Student Botany Festival, August 2025. QR code for recording of competition.

🌱🌾🌺🏵️🌳🌿🌏 Third student botany festival had undergrad & postgrad students from over 25 institutions, and botanical scientists. Gave students opportunity to talk with botanists they would not otherwise meet. Great for inspiration, contacts and realising there are #careerswithplants! #BUC2025

Glass house full of plants and people looking at them. Photo by Laura Bennetto/BUC.

🌱🌾🌍🌏🌎🌳🌿🌲 What better way to explore a glasshouse full of exotic plants than with one of its curators? Part of workshop at Third Student Botany Festival 2025 in Cambridge University Botanic Garden @cubotanicgarden.bsky.social @drmgoeswild.bsky.social #BUC2025

People in Cambridge Botanic Garden looking at plants. Photo by Laura Bennetto for BUC.

🌱🌾🌍🌺🌿🌳🐝🌷3rd Student Botany Festival #BUC2025 was next to Cambridge Botanic Garden @cubotanicgarden.bsky.social. Excellent to make use of plants in it during workshops and just to admire!

Great suggestion for @inaturalist.bsky.social l (& other on-line systems). Add ID to others records! You do not have to be the national expert. Good advice on how to make use of your plant ID skill, however limited. Includes: can you distinguish a plant from an animal? Even that is useful!! #BUC2025

Lecture theatre with audience. Photo Laura Bennetto.

🌱🌾🌺🏵️🌳🌿🌏 Amazing number of enthusiastic students keen on #botany at Third Student Botany Festival; 94 from UK and Ireland. Thinking about #careerswithplants & here listening to @cieem.bsky.social @bsbicountries.bsky.social @spun.earth @drmgoeswild.bsky.social #BUC2025

Picture of man with photos of orchid flowers behind him, and plants around him. People sitting at desks listening.

🌱🌾🌺🏵️🌳🌿🌏Botanical University Challenge #BUC2025. After, 3rd Student Botany Festival. Included workshop on orchids. About 10% of the seed plant species, monocots, but so much diversity: colours, scents, sizes, habitats, lifestyles, fungal partners. Exciting to hear from an expert!

🌱🌾🌍🌺🌳🌲🌴🧪Why do people get into plants at university? Listen to James Ashford in his second year of B. Sc. Biology at University of Aberystwyth. Short answer: Fun and employment prospects. #BUC2025

🌱🌾🌍🌺🌏🌳🌎🐝Other ways people get into #botany are through family influence. Here Ellie Defty, now studying at University of Leeds explains how her mother's art led her to plants. One of the first team from Leeds to enter Botanical University Challenge #BUC2025 talking at 3rd Student Botany Festival.

🌱🌾🌍🌺🌏🌳🌎🐝How do people get into botany? Here's Sophie Ball, now studying Global Health at Royal Holloway University of London. She explains at 3rd Student Botany Festival what started her journey into plants. #BUC2025

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌿🌳🌲Botanical University Challenge 2025 winners are team Taxon Taxoff from University of Aberdeen. Their name has been inscribed on the trophy & is now on its way to them to treasure for a year. @newphyt.bsky.social @gpsep.bsky.social @bsbibotany.bsky.social @cubotanicgarden.bsky.social #BUC2025

🌱🌍🌎🌳🎼🎶Making a whistle from sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus) twig. Botanical knowledge helps with successful design and construction! Maybe will feature in October issue The Thymes, newsletter of Botanical University Challenge #BUC2025 !

Workshop in small room. Students gathering around tables for foray into insects. Slide of different flies on the wall. Photographs by Laura Bennetto https://bennettophotography.co.uk/

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌿🐝 Third Student Botany Festival after Botanical University Challenge #BUC2025. Introduction to insects! Why? Where do many live, hover, display, eat but plants? Pollination by insects! Carnivorous plants eat insects!!

🌎🌱🌾🌳🌴🌸🌻🪾Plant physical responses to put off animals considering them for lunch. The animals may now be extinct, but the plants still have protection. Really interesting! #BUC2025