Botanical University Challenge

Picture 3 young men on a lawn in front of an elegant building.

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿🐝🍂 Team from University of Sheffield in Botanical University Challenge first time 2025. Read 'The Sheffield Sporangia' experience in the competition's newsletter, The Thymes. Read more at the QR code or: botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/

More new teams #BUC2026?

Yes, lichens contain at least two, sometimes three, organisms from very different types of living creatures. Grow as an organised, consistent shaped - sometimes beautiful - lichen!

3 pictures of lichens, diagram cross section through. See full article in The Thymes https://botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/

🌱🌾🌍🌺🌳🐝 Students write about their planty enthusiasms in newsletter of Botanical University Challenge #BUC2026. Latest issue has lichens, plant-fungal-bacterial symbiosis. Get introduced to them!

botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/

More on lichens: britishlichensociety.org.uk

Funnily enough, Birmingham has strengthened its plant sciences group in the School of Biosciences.

I know. Over here everyone wants to do sports science. Fine, but you only need so many people doing that. And yes, if you take plant science and are halfway decent you will get a good job. Only up side is ancient people like me are still needed!?!

Like Australia. It's all about bums on seats. There's already a short fall of graduates - plant science majors walk straight into jobs

Sign the Petition Reconsider the potential suspension of Plant Biology Courses at UoN

My students have set up a petition to persuade the University of Nottingham not to close our Plant Biology BSc course
c.org/VPhzVVrHPS

Please consider signing

Agreed! There are hardly any places left doing Plant Biology now in the UK. We kind of need it for the future.....

Really stupid decision.

This is exactly what the country needs in the upcoming decades as climate change really starts to decimate agriculture worldwide, fewer experts on plants. We are in the age of stupidity.

Appalling

screen grab of petition about closing Plant Biology at University of Nottingham UK. Picture of university buildings.

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🧪🌳🐝🌿🌳🍅🍞🥦Botanical University Challenge to inspire the next generation of botanists.

University of Nottingham, UK, plans to close Plant Biology for new students from autumn 2026. Current students want to know more. Read more here:

www.change.org/p/reconsider...

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🧪🌳🐝What was the Third Student Botany Festival like? See the highlights video on our YouTube channel!

Lively, informative, scientific, FUN!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmfO...

#BUC2025 #plants #loveplants

Word cloud. Words fun, inspiring, knowledge, learning, networking, community are major words.

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿🐝What do students who participated in Botanical University Challenge think of it? And, if you are a university student in the UK or Ireland keen on plants, why should you participate in BUC2026?

Listen to their own words on YouTube!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8vX...

It was difficult to persuade AI to produce an appropriate illustration of the human-crafted joke about plants other than Buxuaceae thinking outside the box. The picture you see is part AI, part good old fashioned Paintshop!

Text: How do you tell if a plant is not a member of the Buxaceae? It is the one thinking outside the box! Picture: a cardboard box and something like a flowering bluebell stuck in a heap of potting compost with a think bubble of a brain, square and lightning symbol inside it.

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🐝 Botanical jokes; love them or sigh over them! Always have one in The Thymes. AI tried to interpret the currant one. botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/ #BUC2026

Private Eye Magazine | Official Site - the UK's number one best-selling news and current affairs magazine, edited by Ian Hislop HALLOWEEN HORROR COSTUME SHOCK

The UK humorous magazine is Private Eye. It has a website and podcast, but mostly is a printed (on paper) magazine.
www.private-eye.co.uk

Heap of leaves and 2 clouds thinking of blowing them around.

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🧪🌳🐝 An amusing plant-oriebtated seasonal cartoon from UK satirical magazine. #BUC2026

Team slides of Plantastic Five and Pain in the Grass, from Botanical University Challenge 2025.

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🧪🌳🐝The amazing team names are a feature of Botanical University Challenge. Where do they come from? Team Pain in the Grass from University of Portsmouth explain in latest issue newsletter The Thymes. #BUC2026 botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/

Masthead The Thymes, images from issue 13. See all at url below https://botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🐝 Latest newsletter about Botanical University Challenge is now available on our website. Book reviews, information about #BUC2026, memories of this summer's competition and festival ...
botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/

Spikes of white flowers in woodland growing through moss.

Graceful delicate white flowers descending from spanish moss covered branch.

🌿🌱🌾🌍🌎🍄👻💮Ghost orchids! Named for appearance, and seasonal for Halloween! Epipogium aphyllum, totally relies on mycorrhiza, fungi around tree roots, for nutrition. Europe and Asia. Dendrophytax lindenii, epiphyte, no leaves but photosynthetic roots. Cuba and Florida only. Both dramatic!!
#BUC2026

Why do the plants do the same?

Screengrab with urban plants.

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🐝 Urban plants prefer to live alongside rich people! Result of surveys from around the world. #BUC2026
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Masthead of newsletter of Botanical University Challenge.

Latest issue newsletter of Botanical University Challenge now on our website. Read all about the incredibly tense 2025 competition semi-finals and final.Then relax with the student Botany Festival. The Vegetable Orchestra. Workshops. Garden visits.

botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/

Building with a tower among trees, beyond a lake on a sunny day.

Botanical University Challenge #BUC2026 is starting! For teams of degree students at UK and Irish univerities or Botanical institutions. Team from University of Nottingham already signed up! First rounds February 2026. @suzieoftraken.bsky.social @herbarium.bsky.social @drmgoeswild.bsky.social

Pictures of corn dollies - shapes like wreaths, bells horseshoes made from wheat stalks.

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌿🍁🍂 Autumn festivals and customs include making corn dollies from the stems of wheat, rye, oats and barley. Now both traditional forms originating in specific localities and new ones. #BUC2025

🪾🍂🍁🌳🌱🌾🌸🌼 Autumn/fall leaves. Once everything useful stored by tree/shrub, leaf itself has to go. Cells change so leaf breaks loose easily. Abscission zone. Deciduous tree now ready for winter storms. #BUC2025

Cross section through a leaf from USDA Forest Service showing where colours are. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Leaf_color_change.jpg

🪾🍂🍁🌳🌲🌼🌷🌱🌾🌹Leaves of deciduous trees change colour dramatically in autumn/fall. How? Why? Leaves contain coloured molecules needed for photosynthesis to capture light and power food supply to tree. Colder weather and shorter day length triggers changes. #BUC2025

Nice idea!

🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🐝How to get into Botany? We asked students at 3rd Botany Festival in August from 30 UK and Irish universities and other plant-focused institutions.

Andre Parise can't remember; Brazilian Atlantic rainforest has always been around him! Now doing PhD at University of Reading. #BUC2025