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bucbotany.bsky.social
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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When and where for Botanical University Challenge #BUC2026? Online 11, 18 & 25 February to select semifinalists from all the teams. Then finals 19 August live at University of Reading. Also 4th Student Botany Festival to 21 August, open to all members of #BUC2026 teams. @drmgoeswild.bsky.social
Pictures of University of Reading - students among campus buildings, plant and insect conservation area, lecture theatre. Text about BUC in Reading 2026.
November 15, 2025 at 9:42 AM
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
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
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🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🧪🌳🐝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
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🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🐝 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
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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
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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
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🪾🍂🍁🌳🌲🌼🌷🌱🌾🌹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
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🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🌳🐝How to get into Botany? We asked students at 3rd Botany Festival in August from 30 UK and Irish universities and other plant-focused institutions.

Andre Parise can't remember; Brazilian Atlantic rainforest has always been around him! Now doing PhD at University of Reading. #BUC2025
October 20, 2025 at 10:03 AM
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🪾🍂🍁🌳🌲🌼🌷🌱🌾🌹Another interesting row of street trees. Acers going yellow for autumn, but one does not follow the rest. Why? Different variety? Location? Younger? Just being stubborn? #BUC2025 #autumncolour
October 19, 2025 at 10:03 AM
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🪾🍂🌳🌲🌱🌾🍁 Amazing autumn color from street trees in #Manchester. They look on fire! Acer sp. Other species trees still green leaves or yellow. Sensing and response to the environment. #BUC2025
Brilliant read autumn color leaves on Acer sp. trees at side of road. Other trees, different species, still green or yellow leaves.
October 18, 2025 at 8:18 AM
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🌱🪻🌹🌻🌺🌲🌴🌾☘️🪴Plants certainly inspire artists. Watercolour of nasturtiums by Phylis I. Hibbert, painted 1928. Displayed in The Harris, a magnificent museum in Preston, UK. theharris.org.uk Cabbage family (Brassicaceae). Leaves, flowers and fresh seed-pods are really tasty. #BUC2025
Yellow, pink, white, light red, dark red nasturtium flowers with some of their circular leaves in a blue and white jug. Watercolour painting.
October 17, 2025 at 9:06 AM
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🌱🌾🌍🌺🍄🧪🌳🐝 What makes students study plants at university? Interest within family is often a big thing that gets them started, but then students find their own way. Listen to Lyd Taylor, Conservation Biology at University of Plymouth. In runner-up team, Botanical University Challenge #BUC2025.
October 16, 2025 at 9:52 AM
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Yes! Tamarind (Tamarindus indica) is in the Fabaceae family
Just look at the leaves as well as the fruit. Leaves of so many pairs of leaflets
Tamarindus indica picture donated to Wikimedia Commons by Tauʻolunga • CC BY-SA 3.0. Blue sky, brown fruit pod and leaves of many pairs of leaflets
October 8, 2025 at 2:38 PM
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🌱🌾🌍🌺🌳🌿🌲🥕🥦 Here's a past Botanical University Challenge question: The distinctive flavour of brown sauce is from tamarind. Which plant family is tamarind from? Five choices: Fabaceae, Polygonaceae, Rosaceae, Apiaceae, Brassicaceae. #BUC2025
Picture of bacon sandwich with HP Brown Sauce. The distinctive flavour of brown sauce is from tamarind. Which plant family is tamarind from? Five choices: Fabaceae, Polygonaceae, Rosaceae, Apiaceae, Brassicaceae. A question from a past Botanical University Challenge competition.
October 8, 2025 at 10:15 AM