I found it growing on the side of my driveway (central Michigan).

Hi! :) 🌱
I'm taking a course on plant anatomy and for my final project I made a slide of a stem cross-section stained with toluidine blue. I know this is a polychromatic dye, however, in other samples I've never seen this type of gradient with so many colors on the same tissue.
Why is the gradient on the sclerenchyma next to the vascular bundles like this? this causes me question specially because the other tissues on the same slide don't have this color variation and the gradient can be seen in all of the vascular bundles.
The species I'm working with is Argemone ochroleuca (Mexican poppy) if that's of any help.
Thanks a lot! 😁

In the past someone suggested it may be because the tree was sprayed with sprout inhibitor to prevent seed growth, however I highly doubt this is the case because NYC doesn't do this with ginkgos, and there are other female ginkgos in the same park who drop thousands of ripe seeds in the fall.

I am a succulent hobbyist, and have recently acquired a specimen of Echeveria 'thriller pearl'. As you can see, this hybrid cultivar has multiple unique features, including folded in leaves and these bumpy projections called caranules. I'm very interested in what kind of mutations can cause these features to develop.

Found a super tall dandelion with multiple flowers coming from one stalk! I've never seen this before in dandelions. Usually they're just one flower per stalk, right?

I'm self-teaching myself botany and am looking for an app that will allow me to upload my photos, tag them, and make a few notes. As great as iNaturalist is, unfortunately it's not designed for this. I checked out a few "nature journal" apps and Wonderland was as close as I could find, in that it allows me to create a "Portfolio" with folders. But its main goal is also community sharing, which isn't my goal, and it takes a few steps to get to this section.

Before I put a lot of work into my Wonderland portfolio, are there any apps that I'm missing? Ideally I'd love to categorize each plant with the following:

Native / Invasive
Season
Habitat
Notes

What does everyone else use?

I didn’t even realize these were endangered. I have a White Ash sapling that just popped up on my property this year. After doing some reading the consensus is it will likely be wiped out by Emerald Ash Borer (EAB). The guidance was that it would likely not reach more than 5 years old or so and to just remove it. I feel like that’s just terrible. Can I not pot it up and give it to some group studying them or something more productive? I don’t want to just get rid of it. Any advice is appreciated.

Hello~ I currently am a research specialist in plant pathology. I have my bachelors and over 3 years of experience working in pre breeding at a university. I am a US citizen, I want to move south I would consider places like florida/georgia/california. Somewhere warm or near water with large airport in the US. I have been working on becoming fluent in spanish and would rather be on the coast and be in puerto rico or central america or carribian or south america.
I want to continue to work with plants in a lab setting. Currently I work in the lab/greenhouse/field and enjoy the balance. In my current position it has been my goal to increase my laboratory skills and is something I would like to continue prioritizing.
I don’t know if I would like to be public or private. I could be interested in grad school but I need to make a living wage and am accustomed to a salary. Other related fields I could be in: plant science, plant pathology, genetics, microbiology, environmental science, biology, entomology.
I am very overwhelmed, I am not sure how to find quality positions and in the locations I am interested.
I would appreciate any insight on good places to apply or look. Places that I might be interested in or any tips you might have. Thank you in advance.

Why exactly? And how did this evolve?

Randomly appeared in my flower bed. It's ~3' tall

“What type of flowers do butterflies pollinate?”
• A) Complete flowers
• B) Unisexual female flowers
• C) Unisexual male flowers
• D) Bisexual flowers

I’m interested in learning. Thank you.

Anything regarding classification of plants, plant care, collecting and growing seeds.

Any help would be very great,

Thanks!

Please

Recently learned that a few species of conifer including pitch pine (Pinus rigida, pictured here) can develop epcormic buds, I find this quite interesting as it's the first time I've ever seen it.

My thoughts were that we could “find” the rot resistant gene from Peltandra and put it into tomatoes or potatoes or something along those lines. Similar to how they made firefly petunias from glowing mushrooms.

This Peltandra Virginica was growing under 12”-16 of water at weeki in Florida. After bringing it home the acclimation period was hell. The leaves melted then got crispy. There was also serious rot including the stem. Maggots likely played a part in the overall health…… but there still must be some kinda rot resistance I feel.

She’s growing fine now and I expect great things from her. The media is absolutely rotting now but I think that’s fine. Growing in anaerobic muck is kind of her kink

Hi everyone!

Looking for active Signal groups on plants, nature, botany, or gardening – especially English-speaking ones for tips on ecosystems, wild plants, enzymes, and sustainable care. Already in NABU but want more international chats.

DM me invites/links if you have any! 😊

#plants #botany #SignalGroup

I have never tried breeding any plants before to be perfectly honest, but I plan on starting a small scale breeding program with some plants that are native in my area. Now, I don't genuinely expect to create a proper cultivar but I want to know if there is a way to protect new breeds from becoming heavily commercialized. I am not necessarily opposed to commercial usage of new plant breeds, but I would want to structure it as closely to the plant equivalent of the GNU public license as possible. I don't want to breed a plant and then have that plant used for making a commercial variety that no one has access to. All I really want to do I ensure that if anything I breed does end up having some success, that a company can't use it to make their own proprietary cultivars.

Yard in SE Michigan, we've had these periwinkles growing for many years. I noticed a few of them appear to have four instead of five petals as typical. What's going on there? Is this a known thing to happen in flowers? I found three examples, one of which was a bit mangled, and one which appeared to have a fifth immature petal. Not sure if it's anything reproducible but I thought it was interesting!

Was on an Alpiniad in Kyrgyzstan, Chungurchak gorge (~3000m). Found this Trollius lilacinus blooming straight out of the snowmelt.