21st Century Issues

Contemporary issues

We will not only recover old issues, but create new ones 🥰🥰
Manuscripts and thematic competitions will be announced via email to the staff and students of the Cambridge University Department of Plant Sciences, Crop Science Centre (CSC), Herbarium (CGE), Botanic Garden (CUBG) and Sainsbury Laboratory (SLCU).
One digital issue per term. One physical issue per year. That's all we can do.
H-index is just a bit less than Nature's
We do incur publication fees that can range between £5,000 and £20,000, depending on when you need your manuscript published

Open Competition!

Open Call!

Following the success of the Limerick Competition, we are widening the net.
Submit a joke, a pun, or a very short funny story inspired by Plant Sciences, the Department, fieldwork, or the eternal struggle of getting anything to germinate. The best entries will receive recognition (and a prize like last time!).

Submission can be done anonymously

Open call 1 — Name our mascot.

The Tea Phytologist has acquired a mascot, and a mascot without a name is merely a specimen.

We are looking for a name (and, if you feel moved, a two-line backstory, Latin binomial, or taxonomic authority).

We would like you to give some reasons on why this mascot name is the best one, and we will select best proposals and in the issue we will share them for everyone to vote.

Submission can be done anonymously

We are looking for something like this... (from a past issue which is still not published)

Open call 2 — Draw us your laboratory space.

Send us a drawing of a laboratory space: yours, an idealised one, a historically inaccurate one, or the one you would build if funding bodies were more imaginative. Benches, glasshouses, growth rooms, fume hoods, the coffee machine that holds the Department together — all welcome. Any medium, any level of artistic skill (genuinely: the worse the better is a valid strategy).

How to submit?

Do you want to participate in our open calls?
All staff and students (and alumni!) of the the Cambridge Plant Sciences World are encouraged to submit — this includes CSC, Herbarium, Botanic Gardens, Sainsbury, NIAB, Botany Building and everyone else.
You can submit via
- Our contact form
- Email to tea@plantsci.cam.ac.uk

Our latest issue

Issue nº 21.1 - Easter Term 2026

The first 21st Century issue of the Tea Phytologist is finally out!!

Now, thanks to your contributions, we are happy to announce a first Easter 2026 digital issue. Find the issue in our Microsoft Sway:

https://sway.cloud.microsoft/g5ncJmFUnSHwBfWv

(We recommend reading the issue in a PC/laptop, where Microsoft Sway keeps better the formatting than in a mobile.)

We hope to receive your feedback, whether positive, very positive or exceptionally positive.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to making this issue possible. We will be opening the call for contributions for the Summer Term issue very soon, and hope to see the same fantastic level of participation continue.

Find all the contemporary issues

Issue nº 21.1 - Easter 2026

Find the issue in our Microsoft Sway: https://sway.cloud.microsoft/g5ncJmFUnSHwBfWv

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