A conveyor belt of seeds passes idly beneath a metal cylinder, when suddenly – ZAP – tiny purple bolts of lightning rain down ...

However, with climate change causing winter temperatures to warm or become more unpredictable, seeds may no longer receive ...

To safeguard biodiversity, it’s essential to plant native species that are not only suited to current conditions but also ...

Like other gourds, the snake gourd is a member of the pumpkin family (Cucurbitaceae) and has seeds similar to its cousin the water melon (Citrullus lanatus), although slightly more eccentric, sporting ...

A letter in the Directors' Correspondence archive describes how the deadly prediction of an old Chinese proverb about bamboo flowering came true. "When the bamboo flowers, famine, death and ...

Scientists at Kew have been studying pollen structure for many years, and trying to unravel how and why certain structures have evolved. In this blog, I will focus on how structures in pollen of ...

Passiflora or passion flower is a genus of more than 550 species which are members of the Passifloraceae family. The genus, which contains vines, lianas, shrubs and trees, is predominantly distributed ...

The Directors' Correspondence Team reveals the artistic talents of an amateur orchid enthusiast in Burma at the end of the 19th century. The Directors' Correspondence team really enjoyed the recent ...

Directors' Correspondence digitiser, Kat Harrington looks at letters to Kew's first official Director, Sir William Jackson Hooker, sent from Brazil. The first is from Maria Graham (in later life, ...

The Director's Correspondence contains letters from several members of the Veitch family, famed for the Veitch & Sons Nurseries, a name synonymous with horticulture for much of the 18th century, when ...