Featured series 
Tag: Botany
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Nation & World
A rose by any other name — could be confusing
Kanchi Gandhi is one of a small group of global experts who referees the rules of naming new plant species.
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Nation & World
In plant tug-of-war, mom wins
Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum researchers examining how the battle of the sexes is waged in plants have found a maternal path to victory.
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Nation & World
Beauty inside and out
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The rich legacy of Dumbarton Oaks exists as much in its spectacular gardens as in the pages of the rare books kept inside the historic home. The…
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Nation & World
Of books, trees, and knowledge
In the Hunnewell Building is the Arnold Arboretum Horticultural Library, whose books, papers, and photographs ― stored near living collections of many of the same plants they describe ― draw scholars from around the world.
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Nation & World
Flower power
Four creations are back on display at the Harvard Museum of Natural History’s Glass Flowers gallery after a long absence.
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Nation & World
The little old machine that could
In the high-tech laboratory at the Arnold Arboretum’s Weld Hill Research Building, amid an array of expensive, shiny new equipment, sits a 1931 microtome, a machine whose well-oiled parts keep cranking out slices of tissue just 10 micrometers wide, thin enough for light to penetrate and perfect for making slides to see the internal cellular…
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Nation & World
A learning gap is filled with plants
With classes in plant morphology fading in universities across the country, an Arnold Arboretum short course is seeking to plug the hole, bringing in top botany graduate students and postdoctoral fellows for an intensive, two-week course.
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Nation & World
Clues in the cucumber’s climb
Harvard researchers, captivated by a strange coiling behavior in the grasping tendrils of the cucumber plant, have characterized a new type of spring that is soft when pulled gently and stiff when pulled strongly.
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Nation & World
Actually, the star’s a turkey
Visiting Professor Pamela Diggle took listeners into the botanical roots of Thanksgiving dinner, illustrating how nature’s everyday trials forced plants to come up with unusual — and delicious — ways to survive.
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Nation & World
Gauging forest changes
Harvard scientists are leading an international collaboration that aims to coordinate research, data collection, scientist training, and analysis of information gleaned from two networks of forest plots, one through the Harvard-affiliated Center for Tropical Forest Science and the second created by Chinese scientists.
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Nation & World
Gray gets stamp of approval
The U.S. Postal Service unveiled a new postage stamp honoring Asa Gray, founder of Harvard’s Herbaria and the man considered the founder of American botany, in a ceremony at the Harvard Museum of Natural History.
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Nation & World
Clues on how flowering plants spread
Researchers at Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum have highlighted female competition among plants, saying it is a new factor that could have driven the mystifying diversity of flowering plants.
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Nation & World
Planting a research center in the arboretum
With the opening of the Weld Hill facility at Arnold Arboretum, staff members and lab equipment are filling the long-awaited space dedicated to botanical research.
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Nation & World
Cultivating trouble
Only 39 percent of the nearly 10,000 North American plant species threatened with extinction are being maintained in collections, according to the first comprehensive listing of the threatened plant species in Canada, Mexico, and the United States.
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Nation & World
Getting genetic leg up on climate change
Harvard botanist Charles Davis is examining evolutionary relationships between species affected by climate change for clues to past and future changes.
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Nation & World
On God and evolution
The Harvard Museum of Natural History’s Asa Gray Bicentennial Celebration kicks off with “Re: Design,” a play centered on the correspondence of Gray and Charles Darwin.
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Nation & World
Century of scientific breakthroughs
A lecture marks the path to a Harvard exhibit of 16th century art and science, still in the making.
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Nation & World
Art, printmaking, and science
Students in a History of Science class worked to create an exhibit that illustrates the importance of print technologies and printmaking, not only to the dissemination of scientific knowledge in early modern Europe, but also to its creation.
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Nation & World
Plant diversity, altitude leave collectors breathless in China
China’s Hengduan Mountains are a biodiversity hotspot; so the Harvard Herbaria’s Dave Boufford and a team of colleagues went there and discovered 30 new species.
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Nation & World
Bringing plants, technology together
Donna Tremonte of the Harvard Herbaria loves plants so much that she travels to far-flung locales like Africa and Venezuela to study them. But that’s just part of her job.
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Nation & World
Growing her own answers
Assistant Professor Kirsten Bomblies examines plant immune responses for clues about genetic divergence.
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Nation & World
Arnold Arboretum launches SHIP initiative
Today (April 10) the Arnold Arboretum launched the online component of its SHIP (Seed Herbarium Image Project) initiative, which utilizes high-resolution digital photography to document the morphology of seeds and associated fruit structures. The culmination of more than two years of planning and preparation, the project is a unique digital resource for scientists, horticulturists, and…
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Nation & World
Trial Turns Over New Leaf for Traditional Herb
If a painting’s worth were measured by the money it fetched, van Gogh’s famous rendering of his friend and physician Dr. Gachet would be among the most valuable in all…
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Nation & World
Invasive species harms hardwoods by killing soil fungus
An invasive weed that has spread across much of the United States harms native maples, ashes, and other hardwood trees by releasing chemicals harmful to a soil fungus the trees…
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Nation & World
Eating plants that grow on plants
Parasitic plants are not just a biological curiosity. Every year, parasitic plants damage farmers’ fields, particularly in Africa. Kristin Lewis, a junior fellow at the Rowland Institute at Harvard, is…
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Nation & World
Harvard ‘Foresters’ put forward bold new plan
n a new scientific report titled “Wildlands and Woodlands: A Vision for the Forests of Massachusetts,” David Foster, director of Harvard University’s Harvard Forest, is calling, along with his colleagues,…
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Nation & World
Snaring secrets of the Venus flytrap
While “speed” is not a word most people associate with the plant kingdom, the Venus flytrap closes its v-shaped leaves in just one-tenth of a second – fast enough to…
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Nation & World
Missy Holbrook investigates the world of plants
Every day an oak tree moves hundreds of gallons of water up from the soil and out, in evaporated form, through its leaves. “Mechanically, it’s a pretty substantial feat,” says…