Flora - Topics

What actually separates a savanna from a grassland? How did natural history writing turn into the modern bestseller about trees and fungi rather than about adventure? How do you restore habitat for a butterfly that needs one specific plant? Cactus and euphorbia spines: the same trick from two different origins Relict floras left behind when the climate shifted Mediterranean-climate floras on five continents use the same survival tricks Building a regional flora from herbarium specimens Endemic Hawaiian plants and the grazing animals that nearly finished them Why do Mediterranean climates produce such distinctive shrublands? When hybridization creates a new species instead of a dead end Are invasive species always a sign that something is out of balance? Why does losing one pollinator shift an entire plant community? The Gondwanan flora still holding on in the southern islands What a herbarium sheet records besides the dried plant Why New Caledonia is a museum of ancient plant lineages Why the same plant genus grows in Chile and New Zealand and nowhere between Do grasslands and forests each settle at their own equilibrium? Ferns and lycophytes: survivors of floras that vanished Do garden escapes belong on a regional plant checklist? What makes a biodiversity hotspot different from any species-rich place? Why are peat bogs and mangroves so hard to replace as wild habitat? What makes a hedge a habitat rather than just a fence? Old place names help relocate the sites early naturalists described A bamboo grove is giant grass and grows like it Braiding Sweetgrass mixes Potawatomi tradition with botany — and raises hard questions about who may speak for indigenous knowledge Seeds that crossed an ocean on driftwood and took root Type specimens: one dried plant decides what a species is called Why southern Africa and Mexico both produced so many succulents What does it take to protect a 2000-year-old olive grove from being uprooted Alpine floras: plants that live above the treeline A tree plantation is not a forest Glacial cycles herded species into refugia and left them there