plants

Topic description and stories

Artificial flower discs designed to mimic the bullseye sizes of the three hibiscus flowers

Flowers use adjustable ‘paint by numbers’ petal designs to attract pollinators

13 Sep 2024

Flowers like hibiscus use an invisible blueprint established very early in petal formation that dictates the size of their bullseyes – a crucial pre-...

The tulip hunter of Toktogul

09 Dec 2022

Brett Wilson's love of wild tulips has taken him to some of the most spectacular places in Central Asia, where he discovered a new species in...

Cambridge experts on UK drought and climate change

16 Aug 2022

From pollinators to profits, food to fires, here's what Cambridge experts say about the impacts of water scarcity – and what it signals about our...

Return of the Titan

20 Jun 2017

Cambridge University Botanic Garden is awaiting the Return of the Titan. One of the two Titan Arums held in the Garden’s collection of plants will...

Researcher Sanjie Jiang inside the 'flight arena' in the glasshouse of the Cambridge University Botanic Garden.

Virus attracts bumblebees to infected plants by changing scent

11 Aug 2016

Study of bee-manipulating plant virus reveals a “short-circuiting” of natural selection. Researchers suggest that replicating the scent caused by...

Cambridge University Botanic Garden Festival of Plants

10 May 2016

Cambridge University Botanic Garden is holding its annual Festival of Plants on Saturday 14 May 2016, offering something for everyone to enjoy: from...

Low-impact hub generates electrical current from pure plant power

06 Mar 2015

Green wall technology and semi-transparent solar panels have been combined to generate electrical current from a renewable source of energy both day...

Bailey's Harbor Boreal Forest & Wetlands

4 degree temperature rise will end vegetation ‘carbon sink’

17 Dec 2013

New research suggests that a temperature increase of 4 degrees is likely to “saturate” areas of dense vegetation with carbon, preventing plants from...