The Biosphere Blog

This little fellow never got the message to elongate! Complete with active ant pollinators. I didn’t even notice them until processing this photo! They are collecting the nectar from the nectary disc of the last remaining newly-opened flower - the… more »

The Spermatophytes The spermatophytes are the seed-producing plants, of which there are two groups: the Gymnospermae which produce cones and exposed seeds, and the Angiospermae which produce flowers and seed enclosed by fruits. Gymnospermae… more »

The Angiospermae Angiospermae, also called angiosperms, are the flowering plants. Flowers, when fertilised, produce fruit containing seeds. The only other seed-producing group, the Gymnospermae or gymnosperms, produce seeds in cones. Both angiosperms… 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 »

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 »