Tasmania home to first alpine sword-sedge

Researchers from the University of New England (Australia) and the Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust, Sydney (Australia), have discovered a high-altitude species of sedge from south-western Tasmania. A small clumping ...

Protecting juniper from a berry uncertain future

Forest Research scientists have collected berries from juniper bushes across Great Britain as part of the UK National Tree Seed Project overseen by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. The berries are sent to the Millennium Seed ...

The secret of the world's smelliest flower

By happy coincidence and far from its native home in western Sumatra, titum arum, the world's smelliest bloom, flowered at Paignton Zoo in Devon and at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh. It's a rare event, but not to ...

Coffee threatened by climate change, disease, pests

According to connoisseurs, the tastiest of coffee beans come from the Coffea arabica shrub, a fragile weakling that is susceptible to diseases and pests. And climate change isn't making things any easier for the plant. An ...

Revealing hidden extinction risk in Madagascar's rare plant species

For many species, there is a lack of information needed to make extinction risk assessments—a problem that is particularly acute in biodiverse regions such as Madagascar. Scientists also fear that current methods of assessing ...

How do people choose what plants to use?

There are about 400,000 species of plants in the world. Humans use approximately 10-15% of them to cover our basic needs, such as food, medicine and shelter, as well as other needs, such as recreation, art, and craft. But ...

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