The Week in Botany October 6, 2025
The nights are drawing in now here, and by the end of the month, even the late afternoon will be dark here. I’ve cut down the last of the perennial sunflowers, which feels very much like the approach of winter. I realise that in New Zealand, and Australia, it’s quite the opposite and the arrival of daylight saving time will have led to distinctly lighter nights.
It’d be easy for me to see the approaching days with gloom, but there are some reasons to be cheerful. Coming up this week we have post on some exciting research on ecological restoration, and an unusual way of warding off lightning.
If you’re too busy to check the blog every day, they’ll be shared along with the papers and the news stories you’re sharing on Mastodon and Bluesky in an email at the same time next week. Until next time, take care.
Alun (webmaster@botany.one)
On Botany One
Nature vs nurture: Untangling why mycorrhizal fungal diversity differs across orchid species
Mycorrhizal communities are shaped by orchid trophic mode and biogeography but not orchid phylogeny.
Tracing the Single Gene That Gave Modern Roses Their Endless Bloom
Scientists discovered that modern roses’ ability to flower repeatedly comes from a single genetic mutation in Chinese wild roses, and by tracing their family tree, they showed how hybridization with a few wild species created the roses we know today.
Stefanie Ickert-Bond: A Life Among Gymnosperms
Botany One interviews Dr. Stefanie Ickert-Bond, speaker at the “Evolutionary History of the Gnetales” symposium held during Botany 2025.
Wild cotton species can handle the heat
Four wild Australian cotton species thrive in high heat, unlike commercial cotton. These wild species could be used to breed heat tolerance into commercial cotton.
Tiny green factories: how plants could make our medicines
A new process could harness plants natural chemical prowess and allow them to become factories for producing complex molecules like antibodies and enzymes.
Drones can be used to monitor invasive weeds in hard to access habitats
Drones, equipped with automated detection systems, can efficiently survey difficult habitats, enabling targeted management of noxious weeds.
…and last’s week’s Week in Botany with the complexity of plants, and the bodyguards that don't help you get pollinated.
News & Views
Dismissed as a joke, UK's first rice crop ripe for picking after hot summer
In an ordinary field in a quiet part of east England, a unique experiment is taking root. "When I tell people what I'm doing here, they think I'm joking," says Nadine Mitschunas, the UK's first and only rice-grower.
Energy Dept. adds ‘climate change’ and ‘emissions’ to banned words list
It is the latest in a series of Trump administration efforts to dispute, silence or downplay climate change.
Dominique Bergmann
New Phytologist interviews the developmental biologist.
How the world’s taste for soya is eating Brazil’s Amazon
A story that omits a part of the world with a taste for soy is cattle, and another part of the world has a taste for beef.
How money, politics and technology are redefining the PhD experience in 2025
Nature’s global survey of 3,785 doctoral students shows satisfaction has recovered from pandemic lows, but harassment and inadequate supervision remain widespread.
Seeing Red: A UC San Diego Invention is Transforming the Way Scientists Track Genes
Revolutionary ’RUBY’ — a cost-effective innovation designed to track gene activity — is proving valuable across a range of fields.
Plants are incredibly sensitive – what we learned about their response system could help protect humans
At first glance, plants may seem passive – but beneath their stillness lies a world of complexity and constant activity. Plants are highly sensitive to their surroundings, continuously monitoring environmental signals to adapt and survive. Think of them as nature’s nosy neighbours, always alert to what’s happening around them.
MSU’s Beal Botanical Garden earns rare international accreditation
MSU announced the garden was recently recognized by the Botanic Gardens Conservation International for demonstrating “success in conservation of plant species, inspiring people, sharing knowledge and addressing global challenges,” the university wrote.
Ohio’s sole national forest could be wiped out as Trump targets land for logging
Over 80% of Wayne national forest classified as suitable for logging, drawing concern from locals.
‘All the trees are dead’: An ancient California forest has been wiped out
Roughly 500 years ago in California’s High Sierra, pine cones dropped to the ground and a cycle began. The Aztec Empire was falling. The printing press was new. The seedlings grew.
When is a tree not a tree? When it’s a rock(!)
Research presented at the 2025 Goldschmidt Conference in Prague revealed that certain fig tree species in Kenya can sequester carbon dioxide long after death.
This Week in Botany
5 Years Ago: State of the World’s Plants and Fungi: 2 in 5 plants are threatened by extinction
10 Years Ago: Create an imaginary future and help shape tomorrow’s reality
15 (and a bit) Years Ago: The Rich History of Eggplant or Aubergine
Scientific Papers
Illuminating Growth: Celebrating the Life and Legacy of Dr. Joanne Chory (FREE)
A summary of talks given at a symposium in honour of Joanne Chory at the ASPB meeting, earlier this year.
Structure and sequence evolution in the pennycress (Thlaspi arvense) pangenome (FREE)
Bird et al explore seven complete genomes of the emerging biofuel crop pennycress (Thlaspi arvense) drawn from across the species’s current genetic diversity to catalogue variation in genome structure and content.
A RALF-brassinosteroid signaling circuit regulates Arabidopsis hypocotyl cell shape (FREE)
Biermann et al show that loss of RALF signaling mediated by the plasma membrane-localized RALF receptor complex FERONIA (FER)-LORELEI-LIKE GPI-anchor protein 1 (LLG1) leads to defects in cell morphology, organization, and composition of the cell wall—including pectin methylation status—and to an increase in BR signaling.
Invasive ectomycorrhizal fungi: belowground insights from South America (FREE)
Ectomycorrhizal fungi (EMF) are essential for nutrient cycling and plant symbiosis, yet their invasions remain understudied, particularly in South America. Large-scale forestry introductions have spread non-native EMF across the continent. South America offers a unique opportunity to strengthen collaboration and regional research to help elucidate and prevent future EMF invasions while guiding conservation.
Glycan recognition by a plant sentinel immune receptor (FREE)
Pathogens target and degrade the extracellular matrix surrounding plant cells. A central question is how cell wall–derived damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs) are recognized and integrated to trigger immune responses. Jiménez-Sandoval et al address this question by determining the structure of the multidomain receptor IGP1 in both apo form and bound to the cellulose-derived DAMP cellotriose
Don’t ask “when is it coevolution?” — ask “how? (FREE)
Coevolution has come to be widely understood as specific, simultaneous, reciprocal adaptation by pairs of interacting species. This strict-sense definition arose from a desire for conceptual clarity, but it has never reflected the much wider diversity of ways in which interacting species may shape each other’s evolution.
Co-option of transcription factors drives evolution of quantitative disease resistance against a necrotrophic pathogen (FREE)
Wild relatives of crop species possess diverse levels of quantitative disease resistance (QDR) to biotic stresses. The genomic and regulatory mechanisms underlying these differences are poorly understood. How QDR against a generalist necrotrophic pathogen evolved and whether it is driven by conserved or species-specific regulatory networks remains unclear. Einspanier et al examined the transcriptomic responses of five diverse wild tomato species that span a gradient of QDR.
Localized glutamine leakage drives the spatial structure of root microbial colonization ($)
Bacteria in the soil form complex communities, and some colonize the surfaces of roots. These bacteria are not uniformly distributed, however, and exhibit precise patterning around emerging lateral roots and early root differentiation zones. Tsai et al. established that the Casparian strip, an endodermal barrier around the root vasculature, is required for normal patterning of root bacteria.
Climate-linked escalation of societally disastrous wildfires ($)
As climate warms and humans build in more undeveloped environments, the threat of costly wildfire disasters is thought to be increasing. Cunningham et al. examined data about the global distribution, frequency, and associated climate conditions of the most lethal and costly wildfire disasters from 1980 to 2023, finding that disaster risk was highest in regions near relatively affluent, populated areas, and that the frequency of economically disastrous wildfires increased sharply after 2015.
Pervasive splicing in a plant DNA virus (FREE)
Pott et al investigated splicing in the geminivirus tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV; Begomovirus coheni), a member of the largest genus of the Geminiviridae family in which splicing events have not previously been described. Analysis of RNA sequencing data from TYLCV-infected plants revealed eight splicing events in viral transcripts arising from both genome strands, most of which harbour canonical splice sites and are predicted to generate novel protein isoforms.
Discovery of iridoid cyclase completes the iridoid pathway in asterids (FREE)
Using a variety of approaches including single-nuclei sequencing, Colinas et al report the discovery of iridoid cyclases from a phylogenetically broad sample of asterid species that synthesize iridoids. They show that these enzymes catalyse formation of 7S-cis-trans and 7R-cis-cis nepetalactol, the two major iridoid stereoisomers found in plants.
In AoBC Publications
Careers
Note: These are posts that have been advertised around the web. They are not posts that I personally offer, nor can I arrange the visa for you to work internationally.
Doctoral Research Fellow - FutureForests, Birmingham
The School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences and the Birmingham Institute of Forest Research wishes to recruit Doctoral Research Fellow (PhD studentship) to support the work of Professor Sami Ullah. This European Council funded PhD studentships is available from 01/01/2026 for three years. The successful applicant will be responsible for undertaking research on assessing on trade-offs of soil organic carbon for biomass carbon gain in temperate forests under elevated atmospheric CO2 enrichment as part the FutureForests Doctoral Network, an EU-funded Marie Skłodowska-Curie’s Actions (MSCA) initiative.
PhD, The biosynthesis and immunity function of lettuce sesquiterpene lactones, York
This project aims to discover biosynthetic pathways for sesquiterpene lactones (STLs) in lettuce, how these pathways differ across lettuce accessions with different STL profiles, and to determine how the STL pathway is regulated during pathogen infection.
Postdoctoral and PhD positions in Plant Evolutionary Developmental Biology, Yunnan
A Postdoc position and a PhD position are available at the Department of Ecology, The School of
Ecology and Environmental Science, Yunnan University, China. We seek highly motivated
candidates to join in Hong Liao’s research group for the project “mechanisms underlying flower
diversity in Zingiberales”. via TAIR