For example, we know mosses are not vascular plants, but are there any mosses alive today that appear to be growing quasi-vascular tissues?

The closest I found might be Splachnum Luteum which is a moss that has evolved what looks like very prominent flower structures. It looks exactly how I would imagine the first flowers to evolve.

And to clarify, I’m not talking about evolving traits that largely exist and corroborate a family’s current features. IE, color changes, or leaf shape changes. I want to know about evolving traits that are literally pushing the boundary of what defines the plant order or family.

For a school project, we are tasked with sustaining ourselves in a Solar Blackout (essentially, little sunlight enters the atmosphere, causing a collapse in society as most food cannot grow). Our team has decided to reside in storm drains, growing mushrooms for our food source, as they do not need light. Are there any other plants we can use as a food source? What may be some problems with growing mushrooms underground?

EDIT: My fault for not clarifying, but we do not get guaranteed access to resources, other than a starting point of having anything we can fit in a shopping cart. If we could have seeds/a power source/ anything else bigger than 150,000 cubic cm, we would be a lot more sustainable.

Other survivors must be taken into consideration, and considering this takes place in North America, everyone will be moving south due to temperature changes, and an above ground farm is risky.

Yall have been very helpful so far (and making me reconsider the entire assignment), thank you!!

I’ve been thinking about this while looking at my basil plants. They grow these huge (delicious) leaves, and I guess I’m wondering why they don’t bolt immediately? Why spend the energy on growing such large leaves when they could be growing seeds?

TIA for any answers. I tried my best googling, but wasn’t making much headway.

Hello i am leaving to mexico in under a month and as a horticulture student i want to bring a book on local botany to learn about tropical plants. I am canadian so i only have books for north american flora.

I need some suggestions for some (professional) literature to expend my botany knowledge

Im not particularly intrested in botany but i have some questions that has been on my mind for a while: could someone use micropropagation to create a forest of Hyperion clones? How feasible would this be, and what challenges might they face in making it a reality?.

Sorry if this is the wrong subreddit to ask such a questions.

Does anyone know what these may be?

Hello! I am from the US and planning to go to India in January. I am a horticulturist, ecologists, and general native plant enthusiast. I am seeking educational opportunities to explore indias native ecology. I am looking for experiences that bring people into the forests to learn about the local plants and animals. Less of a tour guide and more academic if that makes sense. Also open to tagging along with people who are doing surveys of native plants or farming native species. Any input would be wonderful! I am open to going anywhere in India.

Not sure if this is the place for this

Last night I trimmed some leaves off my Dieffenbachia plant with kitchen shears (not a plant person, can you tell?). I washed them off in my sink with dish soap and washed them in the dishwasher with my other dishes. Now I'm worried that I contaminated all of my dishes with the toxin. Is this a legitimate concern or is it my anxiety? Would this degree of contamination pose a risk for humans/pets?

Can it grow forever in this situation?

I'll be moving from Maryland to New Mexico in about six months. I've spent years wrestling with Panicum sect. Dichanthelium and Carex, and would like to go directly to wrestle with whatever the equivalent section/genus that's famously difficult for the Chihuahuan/eastern Sonoran desert might be.

I don’t have an example picture because I’m always driving but I noticed that these weeds grew in such a particular way.

On the side of highways there is always a thick yellow line of false dandelions OR buttercups, on the guardrails, under fences, during spring-summer. Most of the time the grassy part that separates the two sides of the highway or the non-road side have some yellow but never as dense as on the edge of the road.

I kind of expect things like Queen Annes lace or Hemlock to grow on the side of the motorway but they’re more common in residential areas/rural. I have yet to see the same dense yellow growth lining the sides of these areas so its pretty much only happening on off ramps, on ramps, and the highway.

I know they grow in more sandy/gravelly soil but is there any other explanation? Do they absorb car pollution and thats why they grow so densely?

I don’t believe they’ve been purposefully planted so I’m assuming the conditions are perfect for them, can’t find anything online to suggest they have been.

My name is Hannah Docter-Loeb and I'm an Amsterdam-based freelance writer with experience writing for The Washington Post, National Geographic, Scientific American, Slate, Science, and more. 

I'm currently working on a service-y piece for the Nature career section on taking your work home.  If you're a botanist doing funky stuff with your house plants, please reach out! Email is hdocterloeb@gmail.com

I've been trying to find the answer to this for years and just spent another several hours searching for an understandable, clear answer. Originally it was because I ended up with about 10 varieties of flower seeds from the same family that could have made interesting crosses, but this morning I realized that about 20 plants I have access to at the moment are in the Rosaceae family - for example roses, wild roses, Pyracantha, Cotoneaster, and now Indian Hawthorn. How many of these might be able to be crossbreed? It would be cool to see apples or roses on creeping Cotoneaster or purple berries from the Indian Hawthorn on Pyracantha or an Apple tree. I know that the less related plants are, the more likely you'll end up with sterile offspring, but at what point is there absolutely 0% chance of the cross not working at all?​

I am a high school science teacher assisting a student with an experiment. She plans to measure nitrogen uptake between grafted and nongrafted branches of fruit trees. We have access to a lab to measure samples, but we can't find a supplier of N15-enriched fertilizer. Does anyone have suggestions?

I've been trying to find some dutch field guide for plants but I only got books with 400 pages. I'd like something lightweight, I don't mind if it's not the most complete work!

Preferably in english or in plain dutch :)

Take 2 as I didn’t notice the no profanity rule. APBio is destroying me and I have no idea how to explain this 😭

Botany of Desire? The Light Eaters? Braiding Sweetgrass? Something else?

Hello, everyone!

I’m starting a project related to plant science databases with an interest in supporting a wide range of research needs, including smart breeding.. My goal is to understand the needs of the scientific community to design a resource that could truly support your daily work.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on:

1. Key data types: What kind of information would you like to access (e.g., genomic, phenotypic, environmental data, etc.)?
2. Functionalities: Are there any tools, filters, or visualizations you wish were available in current databases?
3. Challenges: What are the main difficulties you face when using existing resources?

Any other suggestions or ideas are welcome! Your insights would be invaluable in shaping a tool that better serves the community.

Thank you in advance for your time and feedback! 😊

My friend's birthday is in 3 days so I'm on a limited time schedule, we've known each other for a long time yet we aren't exactly close, I do still want to get her a present though.

I was thinking about pressing flowers and making something out of that for her but does anybody know how to do it quickly on such a limited time schedule?

also sorry if it's the wrong flair, I didn't know which to use!

Now that collecting season is over that stack of unidentified grasses couldn’t be ignored any longer. I’ve spent the last week working through them and now for a few of them I look at and intuitively know the genus. And the others I’m moving through the keys at a much faster pace. Feels good.

Am i correct to say those are collenchyma cells?

I live in the Pacific Northwest and am working to improve my botanical skills. Obviously identifying a lot of species in this part of the world becomes significantly more difficult after leaf senescence in the fall, but I’m not as sure about mosses.

Is it worth perusing learning mosses during winter months, or should I put it off until spring?

Title edit: getting*

I was investigating a bit about O2 diffusion in soil and how deep it can reach and pretty much every paper I read showed that by 1 meter the percentage of O2 in the soil atmosphere is nearly 0.

But there are trees claimed to have roots down to 400 meters. Even not so extreme examples can be found in some species where the tap root can penetrate well bellow 1 meter in the soil. How does the root get oxygen down there? Does the tree provide oxygen through the phloem?

Hello, in many scientific studies chitosan, which is used as a stimulant/antistress for plants, is presented in the best light. It helps with literally everything, from diseases to seed preparation. Is this true or is it a commercial interest? Do the plants themselves have something that they produce independently and that is comparable in properties? Maybe someone here knows how effective it really is and can explain it from a chemical point of view. Do I understand correctly that it can be an alternative in obtaining nitrogen?

As there are different types of plants adapted to different conditions, I have seen different scientific words used to describe their affinities. These are prefixes which I have seen used a lot and I know what they mean for the most part:

Sclero-

Xero-

Meso-

Cryo-

Thermo-

1. To describe these vegetation types, I have seen the term "philous" attached at the end. I believe I may also have seen "philic" and "phytic" attached at the end also. Are all of these suffixes interchangeable, or are they used in different circumstances?

2. What is the difference between sclerophyllous and xerophilous?