Tag Botany
UW researcher to send cotton into space to improve its growth on Earth
Botanist Simon Gilroy will study cotton seedlings grown on the International Space Station in a project that could help researchers understand how to develop plants that use water more efficiently.
Valuable potato specimens transferred to Wisconsin State Herbarium
A large collection of potato specimens have been transferred from the U.S. Potato Genebank in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, to the Wisconsin State Herbarium at UW–Madison, which has 1.3 million specimens.
UW researchers discover an evolutionary stepping stone to beet-red beets
The new findings can aid beet breeding programs and provide tools and information for scientists studying how to turn tyrosine into its many useful derivatives, which include morphine and vitamin E.
Pregnancy loss and evolution of sex linked by cellular line dance
UW-Madison scientist Dan Levitis’ quest led to a discovery that helps explain why so many plants and animals lose so many offspring. The villain? Meiosis.
Longtime botany greenhouse director Mo Fayyaz to retire
Mo Fayyaz is retiring in August after 33 years as the distinguished director of the botany department greenhouse and botanical gardens.
Peanut family secret for making chemical building blocks revealed
As you bite into your next peanut butter and jelly sandwich, chew on this: The peanut you’re eating has a secret.
Rediscovered mosses document changing Wisconsin landscape
The Wisconsin State Herbarium at the University of Wisconsin–Madison has discovered a collection of more than 2,000 mosses from the turn of the 20th century, lost to time in a cabinet inside Birge Hall, where the herbarium is housed.
New center brings together biologists, engineers to improve crops
The phenotyping center at the Wisconsin Crop Innovation Center aims to develop new ways to measure plants and address novel questions about what factors influence crop performance.
Experiments test how easy life itself might be
UW scientists are trying to understand how life could arise from lifelike chemical reactions under the right conditions, with implications for understanding how common life might be in the universe.
Hugh Iltis, UW’s ‘battling botanist,’ dies at 91
Passionate, articulate and informed, Iltis was opinionated, sometimes argumentative, but always a fearless defender of the natural world he revered.
Tropical moth alights in UW’s Botany Garden, a Wisconsin first
Botany Professor Edgar Spalding spotted a white-tipped black moth in the UW–Madison Botanical Garden, the first recorded observation in Wisconsin of the tropical species.
UW botanist leads petition to give Venus flytrap endangered species protection
The plant faces multiple threats: habitat loss, diminished genetic diversity, predators and outbreaks of disease.
Forensic botany course covers legal side of wood, pollen, contraband logging
The new course focuses on science as problem solving, but also fills utterly practical needs.
60 years after pioneering survey, Wisconsin prairies are changing rapidly
Researchers have found that human influence has accelerated the rate of species change in these prairies and likely in other natural places.