Saffron: a Cambridge spice
17 January 2023An investigation into the local histories of saffron in Cambridgeshire.
Call of the wild collector
28 August 2020Walking at ‘botanist pace’ on Mount Terror in South Africa, Dr Ángela Cano likes to stop and smell the succulents. She then measures, photographs, presses specimens and gathers seeds. Her work is helping to safeguard some of the rarest plants on Earth.
Metallic blue fruits use fat to produce colour and signal a treat for birds
06 August 2020Researchers have found that a common plant owes the dazzling blue colour of its fruit to fat in its cellular structure, the first time this type of colour production has been observed in nature.
From foundry to factory: building synthetic plants
20 June 2014A movement is under way that will fast-forward the design of new plant traits. It takes inspiration from engineering and the software industry, and is being underpinned in Cambridge and Norwich by an initiative called OpenPlant.
Researchers show how plants tell the time
23 October 2013Plants use sugars to tell the time of day, according to research published in Nature today.
Plants and patterning: how shapes are made
11 March 2013A Cambridge Science Festival lecture on Wednesday (13 March 2013) will look at how plants grow through repeating patterns and discuss what we can learn from them in developing smart materials.
African fruit ‘brightest’ thing in nature but does not use pigment to create its extraordinary colour
11 September 2012Unique blue fruit’s colour does not fade even after a century
