Latest news with #botanists
The Guardian
16-07-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
Kew Gardens' tropical Palm House to shut for five years for net zero makeover
It has been the tropical jewel in one of the UK's most famous gardens for more than 175 years, and now the Palm House in the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew is to get a green makeover. The attraction, which houses Kew's tropical rainforest, will close for five years to allow engineers and botanists to transform it into the first net zero glasshouse in the world. The £50m plan will result in 1,300 plants – including the world's oldest potted plant, a gigantic Encephalartos altensteinii that dates from 1775 – being removed from the iron and glass structure and rehoused in temporary greenhouses until their new digs are ready. The plants include 45 plant species on the verge of extinction, and while some can be dug up and placed in containers for relocation, others will be delicately propagated. The imposing Grade I-listed Victorian structure will have each of its 16,000 panes of glass replaced and recycled, while its soaring wrought-iron frame will be stripped, repaired and encased with a high-tech waterproof paint in the exact shade of white used when the Palm House was first opened to the public in 1848. But perhaps the biggest change will be the replacing of the Palm House's ancient gas-fired boiler system and leaky pipework with state-of-the-art air source and water source heat pumps. According to the gardens' accounts and annual report, Kew generated £369m for the UK economy in 2023. The renovation of the Palm House and its little sister, the Waterlily House, which account for more than a fifth of Kew Gardens' carbon emissions, is part of its plan to become climate positive by 2030. Other carbon reduction changes will reduce energy use by 49% across the 200-hectare (500-acre) site. Tom Pickering, the head of glasshouse collections at Kew, said: 'At the heart of this project is the need to protect the extraordinary plant collections housed in the Palm House and Waterlily House. Besides being beautiful, many have cultural, scientific and conservation value, and replacing these collections is unimaginable. Achieving net zero in these historic buildings is an unprecedented task, it's a complex challenge which must consider the interplay of horticulture, climatic control, engineering, and architecture.' The redesigned interior of the Palm House will be more accessible and have more places for visitors to sit and wonder at the tropical rainforest collections. Planning permission for the project has been submitted, with funding coming from central government, the Julia Rausing Trust, the World Monuments Fund and other donors. The renovation is likely to start in 2027, with the exact date dependent on planning permission and funding.
ABC News
23-06-2025
- Science
- ABC News
Leningrad: The siege, scientists, and the world's rarest seeds
Try to stop famine, or save your own life? This was the impossible choice facing the Russian scientists behind the world's first seed bank during World War 2, when the Soviet city of Leningrad came under siege by the Nazis. Food was so scarce at the time that throughout the city people were forced to eat wallpaper, boiled leather, even their own pets, to stay alive. But this set of Russian botanists, with their vaults full of seeds and hidden garden of plants, refused to eat them even as they starved to death. Their sacrifice ultimately saved species of plants and crops that plant breeders have since relied on to feed the world. In this episode of No One Saw it Coming, podcast host Marc Fennell speaks to award-winning writer and games critic Simon Parkin about the decision that botanist Nikolai Vavilov and his team made, that would go on to change millions of lives and the food we eat today. If you've binged all the episodes of No One Saw It Coming, listen to Marc's other award-winning history podcast Stuff The British Stole, on the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. Get in touch: Got a story for us? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at noonesawitcoming@
The Guardian
10-06-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Country Diary: A specialist insect on a specialist plant
I've returned to the limestone grassland slopes above Portland Bill to settle a score with bastard-toadflax (Thesium humifusum). Earlier in the week, my eyes more accustomed to scanning vast seascapes for guillemots, razorbills and gannets, I hunted for this semi-parasitic plant among the vetches, bird's-foot trefoil, yellow wort and eyebright. But though I was in an area where it's known to grow, bastard-toadflax refused to be found. My error – it turns out – was one of magnitude. So today my approach is lower and slower. Nose down, bottom up. From this undignified position, it takes only a few minutes to locate the inconspicuous straggler. It's smaller than I'd imagined. A low-growing perennial with trailing stems and narrow leaves, it scatters white starbursts left and right as it weaves through the vegetation. Through my hand lens, I can see that the 3mm-wide star-flowers enclose five stamens with creamy anthers and a white stigma floating in a green pool – actually a short tube from which the petal-like sepals arise. Bastard-toadflax's uncharitable common name is a nod to its supposed similarity to toadflax, though it's far more closely related to mistletoe, another hemiparasite. But its disparaging title doesn't bother the insects that feed on this rare plant. Glistening green swollen-thighed beetles sup from the flowers, while underneath the sprawling foliage, tiny black and red blobs trundle back and forth. Though no bigger than the flowers, under the hand lens the blobs transform into domed bugs with black bands on their blood-red bodies. These are young down shieldbugs (Canthophorus impressus). The adults are dark metallic blue and only half the size of the more common green shieldbug. I glimpse one before it slips beneath the leaves. They are outnumbered by nymphs, though, which go through five instars or juvenile stages, and by late summer will have matured into the next generation of adults. These monophagous shieldbugs (feeding only on one type of plant) rely on bastard-toadflax, itself mostly restricted to downland in southern England. A specialist insect dependent on a specialist plant. So it's a privilege to watch this ground-hugging bug and to think that, from a down shieldbug's point of view, this prostrate plant is an entire world. Nic's new book, Land Beneath the Waves, is out on 12 June Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian's Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at and get a 15% discount
Wall Street Journal
31-05-2025
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
The South Is Having Second Thoughts About Trading Pine Trees for Solar Panels
PERRY, Ga.—Hunters, botanists, residents worried about water quality and people citing Scripture lined up to oppose the installation of 2,100 acres of solar panels next to a wildlife preserve. But it was the plight of the local black bears that doomed the proposal from Silicon Ranch, one of the South's largest solar operators.
