Rachel Savage

Many parasitic plants produce tiny seeds as light as dust: you can barely even see them. But zoom in with a powerful enough microscope, and suddenly they reveal a hidden trove of jewels.

(Thanks to Renata Piwowarczyk for the photos; microscopy by Justyna Kasińska)

Genome for Agalinis fasciculata, coming up! 🧬
@pedropezzi.bsky.social

‘Dispersification’ of Agalinis (Orobanchaceae) Into South America Is Associated With Hummingbird Pollination and Perennial Life-History Shifts
@pedropezzi.bsky.social @soltislab.bsky.social
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Latvis lab just arrived in Baton Rouge for the SSB conference! Excited to try Elsie’s plate and pie. @pedropezzi.bsky.social @chukwumaemma.bsky.social #SSB2026

Promotional graphic on a red background featuring two black-and-white raglan shirts from the Botanical Society of America’s “Stranger Plants” collection. One shirt shows a large illustrated plant scene; the other displays a grid of illustrated unusual plants. White text reads “We love the Stranger Plants BSA SWAG!” Below, descriptive text explains that the shirts highlight strange plants, with common and scientific names listed on the back in a concert-style format. A QR code labeled “Scan to Shop” appears at the lower right, along with BSA logos and text promoting additional BSA apparel.

We 💚 the Stranger Plants—and now they’re on #BSAswag!

The shirts feature bold illustrations by BSA’s own Catrina Adams, with a list of each species by common & scientific name on the back.

BSA members (exp. 2026+) get 10% off—email aneely@botany.org for code.

www.bonfire.com/store/bsa-wi...

An overview shot of a portion of the collection: a long window box with wooden frames filled with glass models of plants carefully arranged and labeled on white backgrounds, as though part of a 3D herbarium. From this distance, they are indistinguishable from real plants.

Glass model of maple leaves, featuring blended molten glass that mimics the red hues of autumn foliage

A glass model of a Columbine (Aquilegia) with parsley-like leaves and pendulous, faintly red and yellow flowers that look like swans huddled together, necks touching and wings flared out.

Glass model of a Potentilla with almost ferny foliage and simple, open-faced yellow flowers with fuzzy centers.

Recently visited the Glass Flowers at Harvard, a collection of 4,300 extraordinarily realistic glass models of plants crafted by the Blaschkas, a father and son team of sculptors

That’s right, these are all made primarily of GLASS — a fact difficult to accept given how accurate & lifelike they are

Fieldwork highlights from Italy: to understand what a species is PhD student @rlsavage.bsky.social is taking a integrative approach using morphological, genomic & ecological data to determine what a species is in Rhinanthus
@maribethlatvis.bsky.social and Emily Carter helped with the fieldwork

Congrats!! See you soon at UARK! 🐗

We have several exciting events lined up for the 150th anniversary of the UARK herbarium!
Check out all the events with this link: biology.uark.edu/herbarium/ev...

Trinity College Dublin Herbarium

Calling botanical researchers, the School of Natural Science at Trinity College Dublin is hiring a tenure track Assistant Professor in Plant Biodiversity and Conservation.

I know this is someone's dream job, so let me know if that is you and you want to chat!

my.corehr.com/pls/trrecrui...

Fieldwork in Brazil to understand how new plant species evolve? Pedro Pezzi @pedropezzi.bsky.social and Maribeth Latvis @maribethlatvis.bsky.social are taking a multi-pronged approach in Agalinis to understand morphological shifts and species interactions during rapid diversification

Any suggestions on bringing back pressed plant specimens thru customs?

Exclusive: NSF stops awarding new grants and funding existing ones US science funder also plans to screen grant applications for compliance with ‘agency priorities’.

Staff members at the US National Science Foundation (NSF) were told on 30 April to “stop awarding all funding actions until further notice,” according to an email seen by Nature.

https://go.nature.com/44Ugf9V

Brown University advises all international community members to postpone, reconsider travel One week before spring break, Brown advised international community members, including green card holders and permanent residents, to postpone international travel in a campus-wide email sent on Sunda...

Chilling report from Brown University.

Administration advises all foreign students, staff, and faculty to postpone or reconsider (ie cancel) international travel, due to federal government's crackdown on universities.

Brown also warns against *domestic travel* -since it's unclear what ICE will do.

As a curator at a natural history museum, I'm gutted to learn about the dismantling of the Institute of Museum and Library Services. If anything, we need to fund, protect and preserve museum collections and uphold institutions of scientific and cultural knowledge now more than ever.

@phylojennatics.bsky.social and @rlsavage.bsky.social, botanists and PhD students with the @maribethlatvis.bsky.social Lab in the Dept. of Biological Sciences at the @uarkansas.bsky.social recently taught students about botany, plant collecting, and biodiversity at the Holcomb Elementary STEM Night!

Science is for everyone! #StandUpForScience

NSF fact sheet

The National Science Foundation benefits communities in every state.

Hey! We’re looking for a woman in science who is actively promoted and supported women in biology to give a talk or lead a workshop. Let me know if you have any recommendations! #womeninstem

Plant libraries hold essential clues about climate change, but they're vulnerable to funding cuts Scientists say amid climate change and biodiversity loss, the world’s herbaria could hold the keys to overcoming the crises in their folders of dried plant specimens. But their future is in question a...

Good to see an #herbarium study from @newphyt.bsky.social featured on NPR, with an assessment of what we stand to lose when herbaria are closed.

nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

www.kcur.org/news/2025-02...

Includes quotes from @barbarathiers.bsky.social, Jordan Teischer, Lynn Clark.

darlin youre a shooting star

honey, youre irresistable

youre golden to me

i carex about you a bunch

Native prairie plant valentines for your friday

I originally made these for www.plantlovestories.com ages ago!

CFPB - closed
USAID - closed
Medicaid - under attack
NIH cancer funding - frozen
Department of Education - under attack

But do you know who just got a NEW government contract for $38,858,978 literally today?

SpaceX — owned by Elon Musk

This image shows 4 of BSA's recent Presidents and the text: Women in Science Day 2025. BSA is Proud to support women in the botanical sciences. The BSA logo is also present.

Today, we celebrate the incredible contributions of women in the botanical sciences! From groundbreaking research to mentoring and leading the next generation, women have shaped science in countless ways.

💬 Join the celebration! Tag a woman in science who inspires you or share your journey!

UARK is bustling today! Volunteers @dgwalt.bsky.social @auxarcwildflowers.bsky.social @staymoreark.bsky.social and grad student @arisaemaguy.bsky.social mounted plants and worked on insect mgmt, while local artist (and recent UA grad) Riley Moore came in to draw grasses.

We should all be using our best SciComm skills to talk about the impacts of these cuts. Many students in my class this morning had not heard this news, and none understood how indirect costs worked (because who does, outside of academia?) Several came up after class to thank me for the explanation.

A few mosses we saw growing on Ozark sandstone outcrops during a recent hike. UARK has uploaded all of the nearly 3,000 preserved #bryophytes (mosses, liverworts, and hornworts) in its collection to bryophyteportal.org.

Letter from the SSE/SSB/ASN councils on the scientific understanding of sex and gender, pls RT

Reminder - Don't forget about our grants! We offer #grants for undergrads & graduate students doing research, going to symposia or workshops, and more, and the deadline for submission is coming up soon - Feb 15! Details can be found here: www.torreybotanical.org/grants-awards/

#botany 🧪🌎🌿🍄🌾

Eight herbarium sheets displaying various specimens of the blueberry genus, each with detailed labels and color calibration bars. The text above provides code for searching and downloading specimen metadata and images. Image credit: OUHC and BRIT herbaria.

mvh: An R tool to assemble and organize virtual #herbaria from openly available specimen images

New in #AppsPlantSci by @tvasconcelos.bsky.social & @jboyko.bsky.social

bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... @r-foundation.bsky.social @gbif.org #botany #biodiversity #iamabotanist