After fieldwork in a warm tropical country, returning to late winter in temperate latitudes feels like something of a shock. I came back from Gabon to England in late February this year, and immediately found myself missing the warmer weather. Days were still short, with the blue-black sky as company for mornings and evenings. There…

When I think of beans, I think of peas, or lentils, or soy – small and herbaceous plants, with long linear fruits holding a treasure of seeds down their spine. But not all bean-family plants are like this – some are a little more wild. I found a very different bean in the mature forest…

The feeling that there might just be an elephant nearby – that is the feeling of walking through a forest in Lopé, Gabon. In this part of Gabon, there are only forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis). There are signs of these elephants everywhere, reminding you that the forest is someone else’s home, and not yours to…

What are the logistics like on a field campaign to collect leaves from the canopy of a tropical forest? We collect them to profile these species’ functions – measuring things like photosynthetic capacity that help predict forest function or carbon fluxes. But where do these numbers come from? Here is a small vignette into how…