Botanical Accuracy

Welcome to the "Better Botanical Business Bureau", where botanical mistakes in commercial and public venues and products are showcased and corrected. It is not unusual with products, ingredients, and images used in media, design, and commercial works to be presented with the wrong common names, wrong species names, and/or wrong ingredients. This blog provides scientific and educational information to correct such mistakes as part of a global effort to increase botanical knowledge.

Monday, December 26, 2022

Scientific failure rate of up to 92% for ChatGPT in botanical essay on Symbolanthus (ring-gentians)

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A lot has been written recently about the AI-written essays and how hard it is to tell them from ones written by humans.  The construction a...
Saturday, February 24, 2018

"Plants colonized Earth 100 million years earlier than previously thought". Not.

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Who knew!?   According to a recent press release headline, plants apparently came from outer space and landed on Earth... at least if you be...
Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Missing the mark in state symbols (part 1): When a state flower isn't a flower

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Countries, states, and provinces around the world often select symbolic things to represent their place and these are often considered typic...
Tuesday, October 3, 2017

The story of the superfluous drumstick tree species

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Just tonight I was looking through the most recent catalogue from LUSH , the novelty-loving skincare company from Canada, and botanical accu...
Saturday, January 14, 2017

The fate of Astragalus membranaceus to be decided

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The scientific name of the Chinese medicinal plant called Chinese milk vetch, also called Radix Astragali, huang qi in Mandarin, or 黄芪 or 黄...
Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Anatomy of artichoke heads

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This educational and interactive image from the artichoke company Ocean Mist Farms in California on the Anatomy of an Artichoke made me scr...
Tuesday, November 1, 2016

Don't sneeze your weedy seeds

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The confusion in what causes hay fever allergies has been a hot topic on this blog.  Despite modern medicine and pharmacology being rooted ...
Sunday, August 28, 2016

Bad taxonomy can kill world records

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Or, When the world's tallest dandelion isn't a dandelion.  The motto of The Guinness World Records is OFFICIALLY AMAZING .   ...
Thursday, August 18, 2016

Lichen or Moss - that is the hard question... also for science editors

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It appears that New Scientist needs to rename their recent story " Without oxygen from ancient moss you wouldn’t be alive today " ...
Saturday, January 9, 2016

Fine cooking out in the cabbage patch

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In the most recent issue of the fine cooking magazine Fine Cooking, the writers have gone out on a somewhat thin taxonomic limb. The Bras...
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