The Biosphere Blog

Nodes and Buds A ‘bud’, in botany, is a compact, undeveloped shoot which may develop into a twig/branch, leaf, or flower. The region in which buds are located is called a node, and the area between nodes is called an internode. Nodes are the… more »

UPDATE: This post didn’t make it clear at the time that these trees were handled contrary to norms in the interests of science. (Basically, I wanted photos of two years’ of root growth whilst demonstrating how tough these trees are with… more »

Last week was a brief overview of suckers, or shoots that form from adventitious buds on roots. Today I want to pick up from the Sucker Shoot Development section in that post, with more detail and some diagrams to illustrate this development more… more »

What is a Sucker? The roots of many plants and trees never see the light of day, and spend their lives pushing ever downwards and sideways in pursuit of moisture and nutrients. The roots of other species however will occasionally send up suckers, or… more »

A plant root is an organ, and last week we looked at the specialised regions along a root in a longitudinal (lengthwise) section. Today we go in at right angles and examine what is revealed by a cross-sectional cut across a root. Before doing so, a very… more »

A plant root is an organ, and like all organs (plant or animal), has specialised regions marked by specialised tissue. This post outlines these, with an emphasis on the longitudinal section (a cut along the long axis) of a young, growing root. Next week… more »

Roots — so often out of sight and out of mind — have four essential functions. They anchor a plant in the ground, they uptake water and nutrients, they store excess food, and they synthesise some phytohormones (plant hormones) and other compounds. The… more »

Photosynthesis is the process by which plants, algae, cyanobacteria, and a few other bacterial species convert light energy into chemical energy, which is stored as a food source. Photosynthetic organisms thus produce their own food, and are called… more »

This earlier post described the four branch types peculiar to jujube trees: primary (extension) branches, secondary (non-extension) branches, fruiting mother branches, and fruiting branchlets. Also mentioned were the two bud types, main and secondary,… more »

Around 7pm the other evening I was perusing my trees, and — as I often do, gently pulled down a fruiting branchlet above to look more closely with my loupe at the flowers and developing fruits along it. To my absolute horror it came away in my hand! I… more »

Anthesis is the period or action of a flower opening, and this post will document two Ta-Jan flowers doing exactly that. Firstly, a refresher on the parts of a jujube flower to make this easier to follow along:     Stamens and anthers are mentioned a… more »

Back here were lots of pretty pictures of jujube flowers, but not exactly much in the way of information as to what you were looking at. As with that week, this week is another time-poor one I’m afraid. But while this post will also be… more »

This week I thought I’d follow up on the last paragraph of this older post that had been getting some recent attention, as well as my comment under that post. Fig. 1 below is the very same Lang referred to. This photo was taken on 19th October… more »

Rather than a post last week, we had threee guest comments under this older post — direct links are here, here and here — and a big thank you to Adrian and Airlie for sharing their experiences! I stupidly didn’t actually post those links publicly… more »

Common names for the tree and fruit include Jujube, Chinese Jujube, Chinese Date, and Red Date. The Chinese for jujube is zăo 枣 (simplified) 棗 (traditional), and for jujube tree is zăoshù 枣树 (simplified) 棗樹 (traditional). Botanically, jujube is… more »