Annals of Botany

ContentSelect Extra: Public participation proves petal point

There are areas of modern science in which amateurs have not only made a contribution but in some instances, exemplified by the discovery of comets, beaten the professionals to it. There are also research projects in which people can participate without owning expensive equipment (e.g. powerful telescopes). One such is reported by John Warren, working at Aberystwyth (pp. 785–788). In a widely disseminated appeal he recruited members of the public to count the petals on Ranunculus repens in meadows of known age. The data showed that the presence of one plant per hundred with extra petals equates to a meadow age of 7 years – an interesting and useful result that could have only been obtained with the help of many amateur botanists.