Plants in the News 6 November 2015: Pineapple, Ananas comosus

This week we celebrate pineapples, in honor of the completion of the sequencing of the pineapple (Ananas comosus) genome and the insights it provides into an important metabolic pathway (Ming et al., 2015). Pineapples are more than just tasty tropical fruit, they’re also one of many plants able to carry out a special form of … Read more

Teaching with Wikipedia: collective intelligence, epistemology, digital literacy, and addressing bias

To support ASPB’s ongoing partnership with Wiki Edu (see this blogpost) and encourage the successful adoption of Wiki Edu resources, here is some hard-earned insight on what works (and what needs work) when you are… Teaching (more than just) writing with Wikipedia Original post by Eryk Salvaggio Zach McDowell, who has taught with Wikipedia at the … Read more

Plants in the News, October 30 2015: Oxford Plants 400

The 400th anniversary of the founding of plant science at Oxford will be celebrated on July 25 2021 (see its history). As a celebration and count-down to this anniversary, the University of Oxford Botanic Garden and Harcourt Arboretum, together with the Oxford University Herbaria and the Department of Plant Sciences, are highlighting 400 plants of … Read more

PlantingScience Awarded $2.9M Grant from the National Science Foundation

ASPB collaborates on this science teacher training and development program. The Botanical Society of America (BSA), the American Society of Plant Biologists and the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS) have been awarded a $2.9 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Discovery Research PreK-12 program for further development and support for the middle and … Read more

Plants in the News, October 16 2015: Marvellous Mangroves

This week we feature mangroves, a polyphyletic group of plants that live in tropical intertidal zones. Mangroves are in the news as a consequence of a new paper out in Nature (Lovelock et al., 2015) that describes their great vulnerability to sea-level rise (see also Saintilan et al., 2015).   Mangrove is a term used … Read more