What was the result of Botanical University Challenge #BUC2025? 31 teams from UK and Ireland entered. Final overall winner was amazing team from University of Aberdeen who led in almost all the rounds. Runner-up was University of Plymouth team, so close behind.

Day 5 of Advent. What have Niamh, Izzy and Jess got for us today? Walnuts! More tasty tree seeds, and more folk stories. #BUC2026 #Christmas #Advent #Xmas #walnut #plants #trees #loveplants

Advent Botany Day 4! Another winter tradition in UK and Ireland; flavouring alcohol with fruit, specifically from blackthorn. Sloe gin! Let Jess, Izzy and Niamh tell you more!! #BUC2026 #Christmas

Flowers in winter important on cool but sunny days. Rosemary flowers (Salvia rosmarinus) nectar & pollen for buff-tailed bumblebee queen Bombus terrestris. Egg-laying & caring for larvae. Important commercial pollinators in glass house crops. #BUC2026 #plants #loveplants #bees

Advent Botany Day 3! Let Izzy, Jess and Niamh tell you about it. Hazel, Corylus avellana, treasured for its large tasty nuts and straight shoots useful as poles (from coppicing-style growth). #BUC2026 #plants #loveplants #Advent #Christmas #flowers

Whoops! Advent Day 2 is late - heavy traffic across tempting reindeer moss (Cladonia rangiferina, lichen)!! Christmas Rose looks like a rose, but completely different plant family, poisonous & flowers different time of year! Let Izzy, Jess and Niamh tell you about it. #BUC2026

Everyone's favourite Christmas plant - holly! Shiny green leaves, bright red berries. Gorgeous!! Izzy, Jess and Niamh starting to get us all in the mood for the big event, only about three weeks away! #BUC2026 #plants #loveplants #christmas #advent #botany

Botanical University Challenge at the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland at Edge Hill University, Merseyside today. #BUC2026 @BSBIbotany

Plant of the week from Jess, Izzy & Niamh, all students involved with Botanical University Challenge. Red dead nettle - downy not stingy & grows in most of UK and Ireland #BUC2026

Illustrations on plates inspired by Curtis's Botanical Magazine (started 1787 and still going strong!), painted by Thomas Pardoe around 1805 - 1810 on creamware from Cambrian Pottery, Swansea, UK. #BUC2026

18th century teapots - decorated to look like cauliflowers! #BUC2026

Coriander, cilantro, used around world in cookery. Leaves & seeds with rather citrus-like flavour & fragrance to many people. Olefactory receptor protein allows perception coriander flavour. Some variations in gene (OR6A2) mean coriander tastes unpleasant, soap & vomit. #BUC2026

Sago palm or cycad, Cycas revoluta. looks like a palm tree but is a gymnosperm. From Japan originally, now the most widely cultivated cycad. One of several plants used to produce sago. Also grown for attractive ornamental character. Needs warm or subtropical climate. #BUC2026

Ginkgo (maidenhair tree, Ginkgo biloba) from East Asia. Last living member of a plant order that evolved over 290 million years ago. Humans have cultivated it for centuries. Attractive fan-shaped leaves, bright yellow in autumn before fall off. #BUC2026

#BUC2026 Impressive survival of moss spores, Physcomitrella patens (spreading earthmoss) on outside of International Space Station for 9 months! Vacuum, radiation, dry, too much light, cold. Over 80% germinated when back on Earth. https://t.co/NgR9ss2SWm

Horse chestnut Aesculus hippocastanum, family Sapindaceae. Palmate leaves, tall spikes of large pink-white flowers. In autumn spiky green fruits with shiny brown seeds, conkers. Used in UK & Ireland for a children's game. Also in early biotechnology to produce acetone. #BUC2026

When & where for Botanical University Challenge #BUC2026? Online 11, 18 & 25 February to select semifinalists from all the teams. Then finals 19 August live at University of Reading. Also 4th Student Botany Festival to 21 August, open to all members of #BUC2026 teams.

The core of Botanical University Challenge #BUC2026 is the plant knowledge quiz. See multiple-choice tie-breaker in this year's semifinal. Galls likely for larvae wasp Diplolepis spinosissimae. https://t.co/Ahqv1elEYP Example questions every copy BUC newsletter. Follow QR code.

Team from University of Sheffield in Botanical University Challenge first time 2025. Read 'The Sheffield Sporangia' experience in the competition's newsletter, The Thymes. Read more at the QR code or: https://t.co/2xmBrNfqJn More new university teams #BUC2026?

Students write about their planty enthusiasms in newsletter of Botanical University Challenge #BUC2026. Latest issue has lichens, amazing plant-fungal-bacterial symbiosis. Get introduced to them! https://t.co/2xmBrNfqJn More on lichens @BLSlichens

Botanical University Challenge #BUC2026 to inspire the next generation of botanists. University of Nottingham, UK, plans to close Plant Biology for new students from autumn 2026. Current students want to know more. Read more here: https://t.co/Xsl39o83uO