Botany

Molecular “bypasses” improve grass plants’s synthesis of lignin and starch, laying the early groundwork for evolutionary success Words: Elise Mahon | Photos: Sarah Friedrich One hundred million years ago, long before human intervention, ancestors of grasses, like wheat, rice and maize generated “bypasses” of chemical pathways that are used to create two critical compounds: lignin and starch. These more efficient pathways ...

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We’ve Moved! 🚚📦
IBio joined our colleagues from the Department of Botany to form UW–Madison’s first ever Department of Biology!
Give us a follow on our new page, UW-Madison Biology to see what new doors we open together

Check out the "death bloom" of the Agave victoriae-reginae in the Botany Greenhouse before it's done! It's a ceiling-scraper and a rare sight.

15-foot ‘death bloom’ draws visitors to UW-Madison greenhouse Agave plants, also called a century plant, bloom once before they die.

We've mentioned before how proud we are of Grad Student Joseph Walston being recognized with the Award for Mentoring Undergraduates in Research, Scholarly and Creative Activities. Take a moment with this article to find out how he and other great mentors have been so impactful:
https://news.wisc.edu/going-above-and-beyond-to-help-students-succeed/

Kaylin DeHart is a senior at the University of Wisconsin–Madison majoring in Neurobiology and Botany. Her work is a model for why studying across disciplines can build a broader understanding of the science of life:

https://madison.com/exclusive/fueling-discovery/article_2456ff48-71e6-454f-b51b-c2b6723822a3.html

Congratulations, graduates!
Today is a beautiful day for our Graduation meet-and-greet. Grads, family, faculty and staff took time to talk, play and pick up some Botany and ConsBio swag before heading off into the summer.

John Zaborsky, along with fellow UW Botany alumni Jeff Rose, Ricardo Kriebel, Bryan Drew, and Ken Sytsma have published a paper on the phylogenetics and biogeography of Sesamothamnus (Pedaliaceae) in American Journal of Botany. A phylogenetic tree based on 512 nuclear genes and entire plastomes was generated for Sesamothamnus. The nuclear and plastome data provided congruent phylogenies and showed that the species restricted to northeast Africa are sister to the species in southern Africa. Sesamothamnus shows a classic distributional pattern between these arid areas: the African Arid Corridor (AAC) disjunction. A hypothesis explaining this disjunction posits the former existence of a corridor of arid habitats that linked the two areas. Searching the literature, the authors found 73 examples of vascular plants that exhibit this distribution. Along with Sesamothamnus, time-calibrated splits were obtained for these groups, ranging from 34 Ma to the Pleistocene, with the majority dated to the late Miocene, Pliocene, and Pleistocene.

Most clades, including Sesamothamnus, appear associated with waves of aridification that shaped the biota of Africa during this time, with the corridor opening and closing repeatedly. The rise of C4 and CAM photosynthesis, evolution of succulence and spiny stems, and the diversification of bovids also occurred during this time. The data show that the AAC formed and reformed many times, allowing the ancestors of these plants to frequently migrate from the southwest to the northeast. The pattern is complicated, and phylogenetic studies of widely distributed African genera may reveal more AAC disjunctions between sister taxa.
https://bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajb2.70192

We'd like to congratulate grad student Freyja Moser (Muir Lab) who was awarded an NSF GRFP!
Way to go, Freyja!

We are proud of Botany graduate student Zoe Ryan, who was selected to be a Lead Teaching Mentor for the L&S Teaching Mentors Program! And we are also proud of grad student Shaneya Miriyagalla, who is a Teaching Mentor in the program. Each Teaching Mentor is chosen through a competitive selection process for their enthusiasm and capacity to help others develop as effective and equitable teachers. They not only serve as role models, but also as sources of support and knowledge for both new and returning TAs.
https://teachlearn.ls.wisc.edu/ta-programming/teaching-mentors/