Botanical University Challenge
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Botanical University Challenge
@bucbotany.bsky.social
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Annual plant knowledge quiz among UK and Irish Universities. For more information https://botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/
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Botanical University Challenge @bucbotany.bsky.social · Aug 24
🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🧪🌳🐝 What was the result of Botanical University Challenge #BUC2025? 31 teams from UK and Ireland entered. Final overall winner was amazing team from University of Aberdeen who led in almost all the rounds. Runner-up was University of Plymouth team, so close behind.
Final outcome of Botanical University Challenge 2025. Logos of the 31 universities & institutions that entered teams. Background picture of part of Cambridge University Botanic Garden where the semifinals and final were held. Four semifinalists were Universities of Aberdeen, Reading, Plymouth and Eden Project University Centre. Overall winner was team from University of Aberdeen with team from University of Plymouth close runner up. Also logos of our Gold-level sponsor, Gatsby Foundation and Silver-level sponsors New Phytologist Foundation, The Company of Biologists, University of Cambridge & Cambridge University Botanic Garden. Also grateful to our many Bronze-level sponsors and many others who supported the competition and 3rd Student Botany Festival that followed with their help-in-kind, knowledge and assistance.
bucbotany.bsky.social
🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿🐝🌴Seven teams signed up for Botanical University Challenge 2026 before the Christmas/New Year break! As well as University of Nottingham (in October!) and Southampton, they include Edge Hill University near Ormskirk on Merseyside. See website info to enter your student team. #BUC2026
About Plant Science at Edge Hill University
December 29, 2025 at 10:44 AM
bucbotany.bsky.social
🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿❄️🎄Holly is seasonal, but variegated holly even more interesting. Green leaves, yellow round edge - why? No chloroplasts in yellow area - no photosynthesis, no CO2 fixed - but gets sugars from green area. Central shoot, all-yellow leaves - relies on rest of plant green leaf for life. #BUC2026
Picture of variegated holly. Leaves are green with yellow around the edge. At centre of picture is a single vertical shoot where all leaves are yellow. Logo for Botanical University Challenge and QR code for YouTube channel
December 28, 2025 at 11:43 AM
bucbotany.bsky.social
🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿❄️🎄 Looking forward to Spring. Tulips dramatic when grown in big groups! Tulip mania in Netherlands when bulbs values peaked 1636–37 before market collapse. Now seen as example in economics of a bubble when asset prices deviate from intrinsic values. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_m... #BUC2026
Huge field stretching to horizon of tulips in flower. Reds, yellow, purple, and mixed colours
December 27, 2025 at 11:33 AM
bucbotany.bsky.social
🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿❄️🎄 The 12 Days of Christmas - & looking back to autumn - remind us of pears. Over 3000 varieties developed over 4000 years from wild Pyrus genus. Selected for appearance, flavour/flavor, uses & keeping properties across. Originates across Asia, Middle East, North Africa and Europe. #BUC2026
Two luscious pears on a tree. Green lesves visible. Pears yellow-green with red blush on shoulders and covered in dewdrops.
December 26, 2025 at 11:15 AM
bucbotany.bsky.social
🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿❄️🎄 Advent Botany Day 25 - It's Christmas! Let's see highlights again from Izzy, Niamh and Jess!
Christmas Greetings and Best Wishes to all from Botanical University Challenge!
#BUC2026 #AdventBotany #ChristmasPlants #Christmas #plants #loveplants
December 25, 2025 at 9:53 AM
bucbotany.bsky.social
🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿❄️🎄Advent Botany Day 24 - mistletoe! So much to say about it and Izzy, Jess and Niamh tell you more. They have been so inventive with seasonal and Christmassy plants!

#BUC2026 #AdventBotany #ChristmasPlants #mistletoe #plants #loveplants
December 24, 2025 at 9:54 AM
Reposted by Botanical University Challenge
nickdesnoyer.bsky.social
Pleased to share this thoughtful essay by Jess on my flower design project🌹🧬

As a small thank-you for spreading the work, I'm randomly giving away 5 of these new morphogenesis hoodies to whoever reposts this!
December 15, 2025 at 5:51 PM
bucbotany.bsky.social
🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿❄️🎄Advent Botany Day 23 - oak! Long-lived tree hosts many others! See database OakEcol for all 2,300 of UK oak's insects, lichens, bryophytes, birds, animals associations. Some rely on on oak, others more casual. Niamh, Izzy & Jess tell you more! #BUC2026
catalogue.ceh.ac.uk/documents/22...
December 23, 2025 at 1:51 PM
bucbotany.bsky.social
🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿❄️🎄Traditional song '12 Days of Christmas' can be depicted in plants. For example, flowers of Great Burnet (Sanguisorba officinalis) are like drum-sticks. Line in song about drummers drumming. #BUC2026
Pictures great burnet plant. Cluster of small vivid red flowers on tall stalk. Looks like a drum-stick.
December 23, 2025 at 10:26 AM
bucbotany.bsky.social
🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿❄️🎄Advent Botany Day 22 - reindeer moss! Santa Claus/Father Christmas gets closer ... Grows on the ground and an important food for reindeer/caribou, but Jess, Izzy and Niamh will tell you more about it - for example, not actually a moss. #BUC2026
December 22, 2025 at 10:39 AM
bucbotany.bsky.social
🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿❄️🎄Advent Botany Day 21 - juniper. Smallish evergreen trees that can grow into beautiful shapes.

Jess, Izzy and Niamh will tell you more! #BUC2026 #AdventBotany #ChristmasPlants #evergreentrees
December 21, 2025 at 9:54 AM
bucbotany.bsky.social
🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿❄️🎄 Advent Botany Day 20 - thyme! Aromatic herb in cookery. Niamh, Izzy & Jess tell you more! Also, The Thymes is the name of the official newsletter of Botanical University Challenge. All issues:
botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/

#BUC2026 #AdventBotany #ChristmasPlants #herbs
December 20, 2025 at 9:14 PM
bucbotany.bsky.social
🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿 About 40% of all food grown is destroyed by pests & disease before being eaten. Recent review suggests global heating allows pests to thrive in temperate climates like the US and Europe. Not good news for reducing food losses.
More details:
www.nature.com/articles/s43...

#BUC2026
Screenshot from newspaper article (The Guardian) about the scientific paper report. Shows some sort of green leaf-hopper on a stem.
December 20, 2025 at 1:38 PM
bucbotany.bsky.social
🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿❄️🎄Advent Botany Day 19 - onions! Brings sweetness and flavour/flavor to so many cooked foods!! Colourful/colorful red, brown and white bulbs. Mysterious why no scent until bulbs cut, then aroma so intense you cry!

Let Niamh, Izzy and Jess tell you more about it. #BUC2026
December 19, 2025 at 3:55 PM
bucbotany.bsky.social
Advent Botany Day 18. Nearing the Big Day so time to think of Christmas trees! Several evergreen trees species used in Europe. Norway spruce, Nordmann fir, Lodgepole pine ....

More about Christmas trees from the Forestry Commission: www.forestryengland.uk/blog/the-exp...

#BUC2026 #AdventBotany
December 18, 2025 at 11:45 AM
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🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿❄️🎄Advent Botany Day 17. A really special plant. Seems to be only found wild in one place in the World, the Great Orme in North Wales! Creigafal y Gogarth or (less glamourously) Wild Cotoneaster, Cotoneaster cambricus. A super rare plant. Jess, Izzy and Niamh tell you more. #BUC2026
December 17, 2025 at 11:56 AM
bucbotany.bsky.social
🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿❄️🎄Advent Botany Day 16 - parsley! Intense green leaves, very characteristic scent and flavour/flavor when sprinkled on meals.
Let Jess, Izzy and Niamh tell you more!! #BUC2026 #AdventBotany #plants #loveplants
December 16, 2025 at 10:57 AM
bucbotany.bsky.social
🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿❄️🎄 Advent Botany Day 14! Only a day late but delicious apples keep for months. Niamh, Izzy and Jess tell you more about them. #BUC2026 #AdventBotany #ChristmasPlants #apples #plants #loveplants
December 15, 2025 at 6:32 PM
bucbotany.bsky.social
🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿❄️🎄Advent Botany Day 15 - Angelica by name and taste! Let Izzy, Jess and Niamh tell you about this aromatic plant! #BUC2026 #AdventBotany #ChristmasPlants #plants #loveplants
December 15, 2025 at 3:57 PM
bucbotany.bsky.social
🌱🌾🌍🎄🌻🌳Advent Botany Day 13 - chestnuts. Not only producing nuts that are delicious when cooked, but also large trees with for useful timber. Let Izzy, Jess and Niamh tell you more! #BUC2026 #AdventBotany #ChristmasPlants #plants #loveplants
December 13, 2025 at 8:46 AM
bucbotany.bsky.social
🌱🌾🌍🎄🌻🌳 Advent Botany Day 12 - gorse! Brilliant yellow flowers on vicious, spiky plant all year round. And their scent on a hot summer day - coconut - is so unexpected in the temperate European climate! Let Izzy, Jess & Niamh tell you more! #BUC2026 #Christmasplants #AdventBotany #plants #loveplants
December 12, 2025 at 12:10 PM
bucbotany.bsky.social
🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿❄️🎄Advent Botany Day 11! Yew trees. Green all year round. Let Niamh, Izzy and Jess tell you more!
#BUC2026 #trees #AdventBotany #Christmasplants #plants #loveplants
December 11, 2025 at 11:38 AM
bucbotany.bsky.social
🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿Plants inspired artists & craftspeople for thousands of years. Curved leaves of Acanthus genus on stone columns supporting or decorating ancient Greek buildings. The motif has been reused on more recent buildings because of its aesthetic appeal.

#BUC2026 #plants #loveplants
Top of a stone column decorated with carving like plant leaves between two window Large plant in flower in woodland. Plant is of genus where leaves inspired many stone carvings.
December 11, 2025 at 9:41 AM
bucbotany.bsky.social
🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿❄️🎄 Advent Botany day 10 - pear trees. First line of song known from northern England 1700s with many changes since. Counting songs associated with Christmas across Europe. Read more from Jess, Izzy and Niamh! #BUC2026 #Christmasplants #AdventBotany #TwelvedaysofChristmas #plants #loveplants
December 10, 2025 at 11:19 AM
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🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿🧪❄️🎄 Advent Botany Day 9! Another iconic Christmas plant - ivy. Still covered in leaves & berries. Often flowering in winter, important for pollen & nectar. Fascinating example of a plant with different shapes of leaves on different parts. Niamh, Jess and Izzy tell you more! #BUC2026
December 9, 2025 at 11:54 AM