For the past few years at Royal Botanical Gardens, we’ve been making simple videos for social media using cell phones. This fun side-of-the-desk project has become critical in the past month as we move from interpreting our gardens and nature...

In an era of large-scale science-related challenges and rapid advancements in groundbreaking science with major societal implications, communicating about science is critical. The profile of
science communication has increased over the last few...

This paper provides evidence from the literature regarding the social benefits associated with plants and how they influence the physiological, psychological, and cognitive well-being constructs affecting quality of life. These benefits are segmented...

The recent publication of a World Scientistsʼ Warning to Humanity highlighted the fact that climate change, absent strenuous mitigation or adaptation efforts, will have profound negative effects for humanity and other species, affecting numerous...

Academic campuses across the Great Plains can serve as landscapes for teaching and learning about native flora of cultural importance with regard to food, medicine, and lifeways. Campus visitors (tourists) and local community members could benefit from...

Plants permeate human life. Our physical and cultural environments are infused with the lives of plants. Even the oxygen in the air we breathe is the result of their biological processes. Indeed, “we rely on plants for food, shelter, fuel, and fibers...

In modern urban existence, the complex lives of plants are often reduced to simplistic categories, which resonate with human utility; as Jahren (2016) noted: “Human civilization has reduced the plant, a four‐hundred‐million‐year‐old life form, into...

Ginkgo biloba is a distinctive living tree with a unique place in plant evolution and
human culture. It is valued in horticulture and as a street tree, is a source of edible
“nuts” and popular in herbal medicine, and it has proved...

We are losing biodiversity at an unprecedented rate, which will have unknown but                          potentially devastating consequences for the Earth’s planetary systems. Before we can
conserve biodiversity, however, we must understand it...

Historically, botanic garden science has been dominated by the disciplines of economic
botany and taxonomy. Today, with around 20% of plant species threatened with extinction,
the author argues that unless botanic gardens shift their...

Humans and plants have a complex relationship extending far back into our joint
evolutionary history. This legacy can be seen today as plants provide nutrition, fiber,
pharmaceuticals, and energy for people and animals across the globe....

The history of botanical gardens, from ancient Egyptian and Roman roots, through medieval and Renaissance developments, and up to 21st century developments, is chronicled in a new article, ‘Western Botanical Gardens: History and Evolution’ by Donald A...