Welcome to today’s installment of “Faces of Plant Cell Biology”! When I sent my five questions to Prof Pat Heslop-Harrison from the University of Leicester, I got something completely unexpected and utterly brilliant back: A full video interview in a…
The other day I was digging through my nut storage box (yes, we have enough nut varieties for cooking and baking to hand to give them their own box). I was looking for pine nuts to use in a pasta…
This post is part of the new series “Faces of Plant Cell Biology”. In this series I am going to post answers of plant cell biologists at all stages of their career to a set of five questions. For obvious…
In this video by Andrew Harrison, Charlie Chaplin and an unnamed plant biologist show us how they turn frozen peas into samples for microscopy. This is the more detailed video description from Chlorofilms, where the video won an honourable mention…
First of all, I would like to wish you a happy, healthy and successful new year 2012! When I was pondering about blog topics for 2012 I thought that it would be nice to publish short profiles of plant cell…
Terrariums are miniature low-maintenance gardens growing in glass containers of all shapes and sizes. Ideal for plant lovers with not much time, space and/or with overflowing creativity. A very easy project and a completely different Christmas decoration is this terrarium…
What spice represents Christmas for you? Ginger (Zingiber officinale) because of its importance in the international gingerbread house construction industry? Cinnamon, the dried bark of the Sri Lanka tree Cinnamomum verum, as an essential ingredient for Christmas candles, cookies and…
This video produced by the Eden Project gives some ideas about how to decorate your home for Christmas with plants.
Today I am going to explain how you can clone your Christmas cactus. “But Dr O”, you might ask, “don’t we need a fully equipped laboratory and a set of pipettes and a lot of other expensive biotechnology stuff to…
There has been quite a high interest in the science of Christmas trees, and therefore I decided to dedicate another post to this season’s VIP (Very Important Plant). To start with some proper Botany, take a look at this very…
This nice video by Kew Gardens explains the traditions behind decorating our houses with Christmas trees, holly and mistletoe. What do these plants symbolise and what is their history? How can they be used as medicine? Where can you find…
