4,295 articles
Boswellia serrata
Boswellia serrata (Indian frankincense, Shallaki) is an Indian resin-yielding tree whose boswellic acids, especially AKBA, underpin supplements studied mainly for knee osteoarthritis; evidence is modest and industry-funded.
Botanical illustration of bryophytes
Botanical illustration of bryophytes is the tradition of drawing and painting mosses, liverworts, and hornworts, serving both art history and bryophyte taxonomy since 16th-century herbals.
Botanical name
Botanical name: the formal scientific name of a plant, alga, or fungus under the ICN (formerly ICBN), a Linnaean binomial tied to a type specimen, governed by the Madrid Code of 2025.
Botanical Research Institute of Texas
Botanical Research Institute of Texas (BRIT), Fort Worth nonprofit founded 1987 around the SMU herbarium; now merged with Fort Worth Botanic Garden, holding 1.5 million specimens, a 120,000-volume library, and the Sumner Laboratory.
Botany
Botany (phytology, plant science) is the branch of biology studying plants, algae, fungi, and lichens. From Theophrastus to DNA tree-of-life projects, it spans taxonomy, physiology, ecology, agriculture, and conservation of some 38 percent of tree species at risk.
Bothriochloa
Bothriochloa (bluestems), grass genus in Poaceae, Panicoideae, Andropogoneae; about 35-37 species of Old World tropics; forage grasses such as B. bladhii and B. ischaemum, invasive Old World bluestems in US rangelands.
Bougainvillea
Bougainvillea, a South American genus of Nyctaginaceae woody climbers grown for colorful bracts around small true flowers; discovered in Rio de Janeiro on the 1766-1769 La Boudeuse voyage and named after Louis Antoine de Bougainville.
Bouteloua
Bouteloua, known commonly as grama or grama grass, is a genus of about 57 New World grasses, including blue grama, black grama, sideoats grama, and buffalograss.
Bouteloua gracilis
Bouteloua gracilis, known as blue grama, is a perennial warm-season grass native to Canada, the United States, and Mexico, making up 75% to 90% of production in the shortgrass prairie.
Bowenia
Bowenia is a Queensland-endemic cycad genus in Zamiaceae with two species, B. spectabilis and B. serrulata, unique among living cycads for bipinnate leaves and weevil pollination.
Boysenberry
Boysenberry, a large soft reddish-purple Rubus hybrid berry from 1920s California, developed by Rudolph Boysen and commercialized by Walter Knott; parentage involves loganberry, raspberry, and blackberry; New Zealand is now the largest producer.
Brachypodium
Brachypodium (P.Beauv., 1812) is a genus of 23 temperate grass species in Poaceae, tribe Brachypodieae, native from Mexico to Bolivia and the Old World; its flagship species B. distachyon is a small-genome model grass for cereal and bioenergy research.
Brachypodium distachyon
Brachypodium distachyon, purple false broom, is a small temperate grass (Poaceae) native from Macaronesia to India and a key model organism for cereal and bioenergy grass genomics, with a ~272 Mb genome, 2n=10, and an 8-18 week life cycle.
Brachypodium pinnatum
Brachypodium pinnatum (tor grass, heath false-brome, chalk false broom) is a perennial rhizomatous Poaceae grass native from temperate Eurasia to the Himalaya and Eritrea, notorious for dominating and reducing diversity in European calcareous chalk grasslands.
Brachystegia
Brachystegia (msasa, miombo) is a genus of about 29 African legume trees dominating miombo woodlands of central and southern Africa, valued for timber, bark fibre, and food, with Pliocene diversification and hybridization complicating its taxonomy.
Bracken
Bracken (Pteridium aquilinum), also called brake fern, is a toxic perennial fern found on every continent except Antarctica, with fronds up to 3 m, rhizomes living 70 years, and control by asulam or repeated cutting.
Bran
Bran is the outer layer of cereal grains (pericarp, seed coat, aleurone), separated in milling; wheat bran, ~14–19% of kernel weight, supplies up to 45 g fiber/100 g and approved EFSA gut-health claims.
Brasenia schreberi
Brasenia schreberi (watershield, water shield, chun cai 莼菜, junsai) is the sole species of Cabombaceae genus Brasenia, a mucilage-coated floating-leaved aquatic plant of lakes and ponds across Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Americas, eaten in East Asia and globally rated Least Concern.
Brassavola nodosa
Brassavola nodosa, the lady-of-the-night orchid, is an epiphytic Cattleya-alliance orchid from Mexico to Venezuela with white, night-fragrant, moth-pollinated flowers; widely grown and used in hybrids like Little Stars.
Brassia caudata
Brassia caudata (L.) Lindl., the cricket orchid, is a spider-like epiphytic orchid from southern Florida, Mexico, the West Indies, and tropical South America, with long-tailed sepals, wasp-mimic pollination, and disputed species limits.
Brassica
Brassica is a genus of about 40 Mediterranean-native herbs in Brassicaceae, the mustard family. Its six crop species (Triangle of U) include B. oleracea (cabbage, broccoli, kale) and B. napus (canola).
Brassica carinata
Brassica carinata, Ethiopian mustard or Abyssinian mustard, is an allotetraploid (BBCC, 2n=34) oilseed crop from the Ethiopian highlands, derived from B. nigra × B. oleracea, developed for jet fuel and industrial erucic oil.
Brassica juncea
Brassica juncea (Indian mustard, brown mustard, rai) is an AABB amphidiploid Brassicaceae species grown as condiment, oilseed, and vegetable, dominant in India, and bred since the 1980s as canola-quality juncea canola.
Brassica nigra
Brassica nigra, black mustard (Sinapis nigra), an erect annual Brassicaceae herb with BB genome 2n=16, grown since antiquity for pungent sinigrin-rich seeds used as condiment mustard and oil; parent of B. juncea and B. carinata.
Brassica oleracea
Brassica oleracea (wild cabbage) is a Brassicaceae species whose cultivars include cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, kohlrabi, and Brussels sprouts; closest wild relative B. cretica, Eastern Mediterranean origin, C-genome n=9.
Brassica rapa
Brassica rapa (field mustard, turnip, bok choy, napa cabbage, turnip rape) is a diploid Brassicaceae crop species (2n=20, A genome), domesticated in Central Asia 3,430–5,930 years ago, parent of B. napus, with a published 41,174-gene genome.
Brassicaceae
Brassicaceae (Cruciferae), the mustard or cabbage family of order Brassicales: ~4,000 species with cruciform flowers, tetradynamous stamens, siliques, glucosinolate defense, and crops like Brassica, plus Arabidopsis thaliana.
Brazil nut
Brazil nut (Amazon nut), seed of Bertholletia excelsa, the only globally traded wild-collected seed crop; Bolivia leads production and exports; very high selenium, 68-91 mcg per nut.
Brazilian rosewood
Brazilian rosewood names two trees: Aniba rosodora (pau-rosa), an endangered Amazonian laurel distilled for linalool-rich essential oil, and Dalbergia nigra, a Vulnerable Atlantic Forest timber tree on CITES Appendix I.
Breadfruit
Breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis) is a tropical tree in the mulberry family, cultivated for starchy fruits that taste like bread when roasted and grown in 90 countries.