Botanics and politics—when plant species become propaganda material

What has the 9-Dash-Line to do with land plants? Nothing of course, no land, no land plants. But these days, science has to please (and serve) politics again as it used. Not only in the world's greatest monetocraty, the U.S.A., but also in its counterpart, the People's Republic of China, the emerging number 1, already in science and, in the near future, in general.

Koalitionäre Knebel – der Real-O-Mat zur BTW2025

Im letzten Post, einem long read (es sind halt seltsame Zeiten), gab's das bekannte Wahl-O-Mat Netz zur Wahl am Sonntag. Hier werfen wir einen kurzen Blick in die Realität der letzten Legislaturperiode mittels dem neuen Angebot: Real-O-Mat.

Die Qual der keinen Wahl — Wahl-O-Mat-Netz zur BTW2025

Etwas früher als geplant, Lindner sei Dank, wählen die Deutschen mal wieder ihren Bundestag, damit ein ehemaliger Blackrockmanager, mehrfach gescheiterter Spitzenpolitiker und geistiges Kind der 80iger des letzten Jahrtausends sich als neuer Kanzler legitimieren lassen kann. Business as usual, wie man schön sieht an den Wahlhilfen. Der übliche Blick auf den Wahl-O-Mat und, anschließend weil neu dabei, den Realomat.

What Europe's electorate wants: full speed towards the abyss

The people of the European Union, representing the last standing big chunk of democracy that fully deserves the name (demos = common people, kratos = power/strength), have once more cast their vote. And sent a brown wave across the continent into their common parliament. Are we tired of common wealth and freedom? Some more than others. A quick overview.

Previously published facts a.k.a. branching artefacts

Via a ResearchGate citation alert, I got pointed to a paper by Klak et al. (2020) in PhytoTaxa erecting a new monotypic genus within the Drosanthemeae. I have literally no idea about these plants, but I (obviously in contrast to Klak et al.) now their genetics. A tale of persistent ignorance among renown plant systematicists.

Big Data = No Brain? Pt. 2: Digging deeper

Having being ignored by phylogeneticists for over a decade, maples [GE:Wikipedia/The Maple Society] – the second-most diverse extratropical angiosperm tree genus of the Northern Hemisphere – have come into focus again. And going Big Data. In part 2 of this longread, we'll dig out the little precious information, usually ignored in phylogenomic, "big pattern" analyses.

Big Data = No Brain? Pt. 1: Complete plastomes vs 500+ nuclear genes

Having being ignored by phylogeneticists for over a decade, maples [GE:Wikipedia/The Maple Society] – the second-most diverse extratropical angiosperm tree genus of the Northern Hemisphere – have come into focus again. And going Big Data. Time to sum up what we can learn from the new phylogenomic studies and trees. Which is actually a lot, although the interesting bits are to a large degree ignored by those producing the phylogenomic data; despite (or: because) being published in Q1-journals.