A murder of crows. A rafter of turkeys. A pod of whales. A gulp of cormorants. I can still see the cartoonish icons from the Nature Company poster on the back of the door to my second grade classroom, listing collective nouns for animals. Some names were descriptive or fanciful…

Great botanical writing that helped distract us from the past year I’m going to start with a guess: If you’re reading this, you’re looking for interesting things to read that have absolutely no connection with the daily news — a respite from the whirlwind of 2017. If you read last…

Great botanical writing from the past year, with special guest appearances by fungi and algae — By now, you’ve probably heard: 2016 is getting some pretty bad reviews. If you’re at all botanically-inclined, however, 2016 was something of a banner year. Matt Damon won the Golden Globe for playing not just a botanist, but a heroic space botanist. Botanists noticed. Almost immediately there was a new…