The open-access journal PhytoKeys – known for applying cutting edge technologies in publishing and dissemination to accelerate biodiversity research – is pioneering an electronic-only publishing workflow in a series of papers published over the course of the first week of January 2012.

As the first plant life to emerge from the water and develop on dry earth, bryophytes offer a unique opportunity for researchers to understand the development of protections against ultraviolet radiation.

The 149-year-old Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, one of the world's largest botanical collections, has received its 6 millionth herbarium specimen. A herbarium is essentially a "library" of plant specimens.

By Klazenga, Niels Molecular Systematics of Bryophytes.-Bernard Goffinet, Victoria Hollowell, and Robert Magill (editors). 2004. Missouri Botanical Garden Press, St Louis. [Monographs in Systematic Botany from the Missouri Botanical Garden, Vol. 98.] 448 pp. ISBN 1930723385 $65.95 (paperback).