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bucbotany.bsky.social
Botanical University Challenge
@bucbotany.bsky.social
2.1K followers 890 following 710 posts
Annual plant knowledge quiz among UK and Irish Universities. For more information https://botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/
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bucbotany.bsky.social
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
🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿🐝🪳 The core of Botanical University Challenge #BUC2026 is the plant knowledge quiz. See multiple-choice tie-breaker in this year's semifinal. Galls likely for larvae wasp Diplolepis spinosissimae. www.britishplantgallsociety.org Example questions every copy BUC newsletter. Follow QR code.
Picture green leaf with little toothed leaflets. Two have red galls on them. Ruler at side to show scale; lead is about 3 cm long. Grey background. QR code for The Thymes newsletter of BUC, https://botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/
November 13, 2025 at 9:18 AM
bucbotany.bsky.social
🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿🐝🍂 Team from University of Sheffield in Botanical University Challenge first time 2025. Read 'The Sheffield Sporangia' experience in the competition's newsletter, The Thymes. Read more at the QR code or: botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/

More new teams #BUC2026?
Picture 3 young men on a lawn in front of an elegant building.
November 12, 2025 at 10:55 AM
bucbotany.bsky.social
🌱🌾🌍🌺🌳🐝 Students write about their planty enthusiasms in newsletter of Botanical University Challenge #BUC2026. Latest issue has lichens, plant-fungal-bacterial symbiosis. Get introduced to them!

botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/

More on lichens: britishlichensociety.org.uk
3 pictures of lichens, diagram cross section through. See full article in The Thymes https://botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/
November 11, 2025 at 1:05 PM
Reposted by Botanical University Challenge
jackson1948.bsky.social
Funnily enough, Birmingham has strengthened its plant sciences group in the School of Biosciences.
November 11, 2025 at 6:19 AM
Reposted by Botanical University Challenge
martinjhodson.bsky.social
I know. Over here everyone wants to do sports science. Fine, but you only need so many people doing that. And yes, if you take plant science and are halfway decent you will get a good job. Only up side is ancient people like me are still needed!?!
November 10, 2025 at 9:41 PM
Reposted by Botanical University Challenge
rgleadow.bsky.social
Like Australia. It's all about bums on seats. There's already a short fall of graduates - plant science majors walk straight into jobs
November 10, 2025 at 7:45 PM
Reposted by Botanical University Challenge
susieoftraken.bsky.social
My students have set up a petition to persuade the University of Nottingham not to close our Plant Biology BSc course
c.org/VPhzVVrHPS

Please consider signing
Sign the Petition
Reconsider the potential suspension of Plant Biology Courses at UoN
c.org
November 10, 2025 at 8:33 AM
Reposted by Botanical University Challenge
martinjhodson.bsky.social
Agreed! There are hardly any places left doing Plant Biology now in the UK. We kind of need it for the future.....
November 10, 2025 at 11:51 AM
Reposted by Botanical University Challenge
martinjhodson.bsky.social
Really stupid decision.
bucbotany.bsky.social Botanical University Challenge @bucbotany.bsky.social · 4d
🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🧪🌳🐝🌿🌳🍅🍞🥦Botanical University Challenge to inspire the next generation of botanists.

University of Nottingham, UK, plans to close Plant Biology for new students from autumn 2026. Current students want to know more. Read more here:

www.change.org/p/reconsider...
screen grab of petition about closing Plant Biology at University of Nottingham UK. Picture of university buildings.
November 10, 2025 at 11:57 AM
Reposted by Botanical University Challenge
crednescodpeace.bsky.social
This is exactly what the country needs in the upcoming decades as climate change really starts to decimate agriculture worldwide, fewer experts on plants. We are in the age of stupidity.
bucbotany.bsky.social Botanical University Challenge @bucbotany.bsky.social · 4d
🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🧪🌳🐝🌿🌳🍅🍞🥦Botanical University Challenge to inspire the next generation of botanists.

University of Nottingham, UK, plans to close Plant Biology for new students from autumn 2026. Current students want to know more. Read more here:

www.change.org/p/reconsider...
screen grab of petition about closing Plant Biology at University of Nottingham UK. Picture of university buildings.
November 10, 2025 at 10:43 AM
Reposted by Botanical University Challenge
rgleadow.bsky.social
Appalling
bucbotany.bsky.social Botanical University Challenge @bucbotany.bsky.social · 4d
🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🧪🌳🐝🌿🌳🍅🍞🥦Botanical University Challenge to inspire the next generation of botanists.

University of Nottingham, UK, plans to close Plant Biology for new students from autumn 2026. Current students want to know more. Read more here:

www.change.org/p/reconsider...
screen grab of petition about closing Plant Biology at University of Nottingham UK. Picture of university buildings.
November 10, 2025 at 9:51 AM
bucbotany.bsky.social
🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🧪🌳🐝🌿🌳🍅🍞🥦Botanical University Challenge to inspire the next generation of botanists.

University of Nottingham, UK, plans to close Plant Biology for new students from autumn 2026. Current students want to know more. Read more here:

www.change.org/p/reconsider...
screen grab of petition about closing Plant Biology at University of Nottingham UK. Picture of university buildings.
November 10, 2025 at 9:48 AM
bucbotany.bsky.social
🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🧪🌳🐝What was the Third Student Botany Festival like? See the highlights video on our YouTube channel!

Lively, informative, scientific, FUN!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmfO...

#BUC2025 #plants #loveplants
November 8, 2025 at 9:07 AM
bucbotany.bsky.social
🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🌿🐝What do students who participated in Botanical University Challenge think of it? And, if you are a university student in the UK or Ireland keen on plants, why should you participate in BUC2026?

Listen to their own words on YouTube!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8vX...
Word cloud. Words fun, inspiring, knowledge, learning, networking, community are major words.
November 7, 2025 at 10:26 AM
bucbotany.bsky.social
🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🐝 Botanical jokes; love them or sigh over them! Always have one in The Thymes. AI tried to interpret the currant one. botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/ #BUC2026
Text: How do you tell if a plant is not a member of the Buxaceae? It is the one thinking outside the box! Picture: a cardboard box and something like a flowering bluebell stuck in a heap of potting compost with a think bubble of a brain, square and lightning symbol inside it.
November 6, 2025 at 10:13 AM
bucbotany.bsky.social
🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🧪🌳🐝 An amusing plant-oriebtated seasonal cartoon from UK satirical magazine. #BUC2026
Heap of leaves and 2 clouds thinking of blowing them around.
November 4, 2025 at 11:05 AM
bucbotany.bsky.social
🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🧪🌳🐝The amazing team names are a feature of Botanical University Challenge. Where do they come from? Team Pain in the Grass from University of Portsmouth explain in latest issue newsletter The Thymes. #BUC2026 botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/
Team slides of Plantastic Five and Pain in the Grass, from Botanical University Challenge 2025.
November 3, 2025 at 9:48 AM
bucbotany.bsky.social
🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🐝 Latest newsletter about Botanical University Challenge is now available on our website. Book reviews, information about #BUC2026, memories of this summer's competition and festival ...
botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/
Masthead The Thymes, images from issue 13. See all at url below https://botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/
November 1, 2025 at 9:15 AM
bucbotany.bsky.social
🌿🌱🌾🌍🌎🍄👻💮Ghost orchids! Named for appearance, and seasonal for Halloween! Epipogium aphyllum, totally relies on mycorrhiza, fungi around tree roots, for nutrition. Europe and Asia. Dendrophytax lindenii, epiphyte, no leaves but photosynthetic roots. Cuba and Florida only. Both dramatic!!
#BUC2026
Spikes of white flowers in woodland growing through moss. Graceful delicate white flowers descending from spanish moss covered branch.
October 31, 2025 at 9:38 AM
bucbotany.bsky.social
🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🐝 Urban plants prefer to live alongside rich people! Result of surveys from around the world. #BUC2026
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Screengrab with urban plants.
October 30, 2025 at 2:34 PM
bucbotany.bsky.social
Latest issue newsletter of Botanical University Challenge now on our website. Read all about the incredibly tense 2025 competition semi-finals and final.Then relax with the student Botany Festival. The Vegetable Orchestra. Workshops. Garden visits.

botanicaluniversitychallenge.co.uk/the-thymes/
Masthead of newsletter of Botanical University Challenge.
October 30, 2025 at 12:46 PM
bucbotany.bsky.social
Botanical University Challenge #BUC2026 is starting! For teams of degree students at UK and Irish univerities or Botanical institutions. Team from University of Nottingham already signed up! First rounds February 2026. @suzieoftraken.bsky.social @herbarium.bsky.social @drmgoeswild.bsky.social
Building with a tower among trees, beyond a lake on a sunny day.
October 30, 2025 at 9:33 AM
bucbotany.bsky.social
🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌿🍁🍂 Autumn festivals and customs include making corn dollies from the stems of wheat, rye, oats and barley. Now both traditional forms originating in specific localities and new ones. #BUC2025
Pictures of corn dollies - shapes like wreaths, bells horseshoes made from wheat stalks.
October 23, 2025 at 11:47 AM
bucbotany.bsky.social
🪾🍂🍁🌳🌱🌾🌸🌼 Autumn/fall leaves. Once everything useful stored by tree/shrub, leaf itself has to go. Cells change so leaf breaks loose easily. Abscission zone. Deciduous tree now ready for winter storms. #BUC2025
October 22, 2025 at 10:38 AM
bucbotany.bsky.social
🪾🍂🍁🌳🌲🌼🌷🌱🌾🌹Leaves of deciduous trees change colour dramatically in autumn/fall. How? Why? Leaves contain coloured molecules needed for photosynthesis to capture light and power food supply to tree. Colder weather and shorter day length triggers changes. #BUC2025
Cross section through a leaf from USDA Forest Service showing where colours are. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Leaf_color_change.jpg
October 21, 2025 at 9:48 AM