Flowers are not on plants just to make them look pretty. They are there as a vital part of a...
Flowers are a common sight in most New Zealand school grounds. They offer a colourful starting point to teach about...
The ‘Buzz of bees’ is a Connected journal devoted entirely to bees. Each article has diagrams and illustrations that offer opportunities for students to develop the...
What is a mast? You might be forgiven for thinking it had more to do with ships than conservation! The term comes from the ancient English...
The value of the horticultural industry will increase with better pollination systems, robust quality control, better traceability systems, more cost-competitive practice and solutions for the difficulty...
University of Otago geneticist Peter Dearden is using the bee genome to develop a bee-friendly insecticide. Listen to this RNZ audio Bee-friendly insecticides from April 2014....
A plant reproduction resource for NZ Curriculum levels 1 and 2. Explore some of the science ideas behind plant life cycles, seed dispersal and how some...
What usually happens when you cut up a piece of fruit to eat or to put in a salad? If it is an apple, a pear,...
Not every plant grows from a seed. Some plants, like ferns and mosses, grow from spores. Other plants use asexual vegetative reproduction and grow new plants...
Plants make seeds that can grow into new plants, but if the seeds just fall to the ground under the parent plant, they might not get...
Flowering plants need to get pollen from one flower to another, either within a plant for self-pollination or between plants of the same species for cross-pollination...
Humans have many reasons to grow plants. We use them for food, for building materials, for pleasure and for many other purposes. A plant really just...
Scientists divide plants into two main groups depending on whether they reproduce by seeds or spores. Plants that reproduce by seeds Seed plants have special structures...
Fossilised dung (coprolites) from kākāpō in a cave in the South Island has revealed an unexpected and hitherto unknown relationship between three of the country’s most...
Plant & Food Research is investigating whether bumblebees can be used to pollinate flowers in commercial orchards. Dr David Pattemore from Plant & Food Research explains...
Hub's writer, Nelville Gardner, talks about our pollination resources. One of the scientists featured in the articles on pollination, Dave Kelly of the University of Canterbury,...
Position: field services manager and research assistant, University of Canterbury. Field: Ecology As part of her job as Terrestrial Ecology Technician, at the School of Biological...
Position: Professor, School of Biological Sciences, University of Canterbury. Field: Population ecology Professor Dave Kelly is a population ecologist who has a particular interest in pollination...
Position: Head of research, Plant & Food Research. Field: Honey bees and pollination. For Dr Mark Goodwin, working with pollination has its challenges. Most crop plants...
Honey bees (Apis mellifera) are the most important pollinators of many cultivated food crops and other flowering plants. These plants would be in trouble without bees,...
The flowers and fruit of flowering plants come and go as part of their life cycle. Some flowering plants don’t even have stems and leaves all...
Plants are living: They grow and die. They produce new individuals. They are made of cells. They need energy, nutrients, air and water. They respond to...
Most flowers have the same basic parts, even though they come in all sorts of shapes, sizes and colours. Flowers are there to make sure that...
Sexual reproduction is a way of making a new individual by joining two special sex cells, called gametes. In the sexual reproduction of animals and plants,...
Birdlife has been declining in the New Zealand bush for many years, mainly due to introduced predators such as rats and stoats. Professor Dave Kelly and...
See our newsletters here.
