This year finally managed to see in nature another very interesting birch - Betula celtiberica. This birch is considered endemic for Iberian peninsula but also occurs in the UK. Photo: young individual of Iberian birch in Abedular en Montrondo, Spain [taken by me during IAVS2026 excursion].

Heutige BSW-Plakat in der Stadt. Ich sehe so etwas als Gefahr für Demokratie und wünsche allen pro-russischen politischen Kräften in Europa alles Schlechteste. P.S. was macht uns wirklich kaputt - russ. Anriffskrieg, russ. Bomben & Raketen, usw. Und jede Abhängigkeit von russland macht auch kaputt.

5 years ago I already said that such questionnaries are not only unnecessary, excessive & intrusive but also dangerous. Because collected information is quite sensitive, and could be used by far not only for diversity statistics. Hopefully, current situation in US science made it clear for everyone.

Quite interesting birch with clonal growth & witch broom disease. P.S. besides, there's quite strange "tradition" of putting animal skulls on the trees.

IAVS 2026 68th Annual Symposium of the International Association for Vegetation Science "Understanding Ecosystems through Vegetation".

Again about praised "russian culture": Tonight russia launched another massive attack on Ukraine. It targeted Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, Mystetskiy Arsenal, Dovzhenko Film Studio, Art museum in Kharkiv and other places. Also, russia did double strike in Kharkiv aiming to kill rescue workers.

As biologist & Ukrainian I am shocked by the level of incompetence in publicly released declassied information by US DNI. Besides anything else, they were not able even locate major cities correctly. P.S. I also remember very similar maps released by ru propaganda several years go.

Tonight russia hit train station in Shostka with UAV.

An diesem Tag vor 150 Jahren unterzeichnete der russische Zar/Kaiser Alexander II. in der deutschen Stadt Bad Ems im Vier-Turme-Haus den Emser-Erlass, der auf die Unterdrückung der ukrainischen Kultur durch das Verbot von Druckschriften und Aufführungen in ukrainischer Sprache gerichtet war.

Today LinkedIn showed me this. I do not know how it's possible, but but it seems some people just missed last 5 years. Yes, if you are currently affilitated with russia, you will very likely be denied from intentational cooperation. The reason - russia is waging a war of aggression in Ukraine. (1)

Tonight russia started another massive attack on Ukraine

I am so tired of scientific publishers addressing authors with "Dr" title. There is no precondition to hold a degree to publish papers. Even more - there are cumulative degrees when one needs to publish several papers. What all these publishers are doing - fueling impostor syndrome & exclusion.

Every time I use European Nucleotide Archive it surprises me with so many issues. For instance, this is an outcome from search query of assemblies for Deschampsia - all these hits are bacterial, not a single one is from actual plant. There is obviously a need in a better search engine.

Betula humilis Schrank

Meanwhile, WH public communication reaches new and new levels of the bottom.

Tonight is 40 years since Chornobyl disaster

Nature published an editorial, calling to talk about failures. However, talking about the problem ≠ solving it. The key issue: failure in science is usually considered as a reason for punishment, not part of learning process. This is also the very reason why people do not talk about it. (1)

Today is 70 years since the protologue for an endemic Japanese birch Betula chichibuensis H.Hara was published. This birch is quite unusual and especially nice during flowering time.

This year marks 80 years since the protologue [initial description] of Ukrainian endemic birch species Betula borythenica Klokov was published, and 100 years since its type specimen was collected.

This is how orthodox Easter looks like in Ukraine - 11.04.2026 ca. 23:20 russians intentionally targeted (or more precisely - hunted) an ambulance in Hlukhiv with FPV drones.

Exactly that is why I currently consider Easter marches hypocritical, abominable & dangerous. "Frieden schaffen ohne Waffen" sounds good, but sadly it does not work in practice. Calls for friendship between democratic Germany & terrorist state russia waging a war in Europe I cannot comment.

IMO, quite excert of content (Збірник фізіогрю комісії, 1938, Lviv) because of two things: - old Ukrainian writing - translation in German but using a combination of several orthographies - German, Czech (Č, Š, Ž), and Polish (Ł). Scan: Dr. Andriy Novikov

On this day 34 years ago (19.02.1992) the small Coat of Arms of Ukraine was officially adopted.

This Friday at 14:00 CET (15:00 Kyiv) I will talk about sequencing of plant genomes and phylogenomics within winter lecture series of Ukrainian Botanical Society. Цієї п'ятниці в рамках зимового лекторію УБТ розповідатиму дещо про секвенування рослинних геномів та філогеноміку

On this day 30 years ago 06.02.1996 the UK gave its Antarctic base "Faraday" to Ukraine for a symbolic price of £1. Now it's named "Vernadsky" and is the only Ukrainian station in Antarctica. The research there continues uninterupted since 1947. Photo: National Antarctic Scientific Center of Ukraine

In February 2018 physicist L.M. Krauss was alleged of sexual misconduct. This caused cancellation of his lecture in Göttingen (IMO, very rightfully so). But 23.11.2018 he gave a "talk for money" at NTUU KPI in Kyiv. The question is who paid for this and why all the allegations were ignored.

Nothing special, just so-called russian liberal Shenderovich tries to normalize sex crimes & pedophilia. P.S. no, mr. Shenderovich, not all men "regularly want sex, especially with young".

CDC data show missle outbreak in the US with more cases in January 2026 than during entire 2025. This is what happens when state policies turned against vaccination & medical research. Unfortunately, the general prognosis remains very negative.

This is a new paper with a part on Ukrainian biodiversity. Honesty, I still feel not that good about it. Because there was a heated discussion about calling russia's war of aggression as it is and we (me & my colleague from Ukraine) were able to do so only in a footnote.