🔥The 9th Round of Easy Loan, Earn $40 Reward is in progress❗️ ⏰ Promotion Period: January 15th - Feburary 15th, 2025 👉 Register now and check more details at gate.io/campaigns/358

#SeedDispersal Another way for seeds to disperse themselves is to be tiny to drift through the air. #Orchids have taken this to an extreme, with most seeds much less than a milligram, abandoning food reserves, and relying on finding a fungus to nurture germination. #BUC2025

How do seeds develop? Programme produces embryonic seedling, tiny root and leaf (cotyledon). Often food package (oils, carbohydrates) to power germination & get leaf into the light. Then development really starts. Results in similar plant seedlings, unlike baby animals. #BUC2025

Seeds monocots include grasses, carbohydrates for most people on Earth. Maize/Corn (Zea mays) cultivated for 9000 yrs started Mexico now worldwide. More produced than other grains. Food for humans, animals; materials chemical industry. Needs humans to scatter seeds. #BUC2025

Around 70% Earth covered in sea. Some flowering plants live in it (e. g. Neptune grass, eel grass) and not easily seen. Others live at sea edges & disperse their seeds using it (e. g. coconuts, mangrove, sea beans). #SeedDispersal #BUC2025

#SeedDispersal Drift seeds, aka sea beans, dispersed by ocean currents, can travel thousands of miles. Mostly from tropical plants, colonize remote islands & become mysterious sea offerings found by people on beaches. Name sea bean also given to some salt-marsh plants. #BUC2025

#SeedDispersal Some plants reward animals for spreading seeds. e.g. ants! Myrmecochory. Small seeds that ants can carry with gift of food for ant attached (elaiosome). Taken into nests, gift eaten, seed discarded in good location to grow. #BUC2025

#SeedDispersal #BUC2025 Some plant seeds can move and plant themselves. Happens in some grasses. For example, wild oats uses awns to get seeds into soil. Hear David Attenborough talking about this with great pictures. youtube.com/watch?app=desk…

#SeedDispersal People now have local & world-wide systems to collect, store and distribute seeds, especially for agricultural plants. Svalbard Global Seed Bank opened 2008 for duplicate storage of over 1.3 million packets of food plant seeds. #BUC2025 croptrust.org

#SeedDispersal 25th anniversary Millennium Seed Bank Kew Gardens and Wakehurst Place. Not just food plants now 40,000 species, 275 partners, 100 countries, 2.5 billion seeds! New storage methods. Celebration events summer 2025. #BUC2025 kew.org/wakehurst/what…

CGIAR (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research), global research partnership for food-security. Includes many seed banks - and also living collections of food plants that cannot be stored as seeds - potato, many fruit trees, cassava, sweet potato ... #BUC2025

#SeedDispersal Specialist seedbanks like International Potato Center, Lima, Peru. 16,700 potatoes, sweet potatoes, other Andean roots & tubers wild relatives. Stores tubers, seeds, cryopreserved tissues (frozen -196 C) and grows them regularly. #BUC2025 cipotato.org/genebankcip/

#BUC2025 Semi-final and final streamed live YouTube from 14:00 GMT 20 August 2025, followed by Third Student Botany Festival for the student participants. Held at Cambridge Botanic Garden. Cam Botanic Garden Preparations include tote bags just arrived!

#SeedDispersal Ginkgo/Gingko (G. biloba) now ornamental tree around the world. Has separate male & female trees. Most planted ones male; why? Fleshy outer layer of fruit (sarcotesta) contains butanoic/butyric acid, causing horrible smell. Unwanted in a decorative plant! #BUC2025

What are your favorite, most useful or most influential botanical books? Post ideas for one or all! To see which books we've thought enjoyable, useful or inspirational, see The Thymes, newsletter of Botanical University Challenge. botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/ #BUC2025

Favourite, most influential botanical book before 1950 for our Botanical Bingo card? Suggestion Culpeper's Complete Herbal from 1652. Full text available online via Project Gutenberg, Internet Archive and others. Ideas to fill others on card? #BUC2025 archive.org/details/culpep…

Favourite or most influential botanical book by an indigenous author for our Botanical Bingo card? Suggestion 'Gathering Moss' by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Ideas to fill others on card? #BUC2025 robinwallkimmerer.com

Book about plants you'r recommend to everyone? One suggestion 'The Orchid Thief' by American journalist Susan Orlean, based on real orchid-stealing events. Inspired the 2002 film 'Adaptation' with Nicholas Cage, Meryl Streep, Tilda Swinton, Brian Cox! More ideas? #BUC2025

Book with a beautiful cover for Botanical Bingo Card? How about 'The Light Eaters' by Zoë Schlanger. More than one cover, but entwined carnivorous plants looks great! Any other suggestions? #BUC2025

Book from a botanic garden to add to our Botanical Bingo Card? How about 'The Hidden World of Mosses' by Neil Bell, published by Royal Botanical Garden Edinburgh? Beautiful photos! rbge.org.uk/commercial/bot… Suggested by British Bryological Society BBSBryology #BUC2025

Next Botanical Bingo Book - suggested about soil, 'Finding the Mother Tree' by Suzanne Simard. Some content controversial and a very interesting, thought-provoking read. #BUC2025 suzannesimard.com/finding-the-mo…