Marianne le Roux, a PhD student in the Department of Botany, marked real advance in her field of study when she walked away with the two awards at the 36th Annual South African Association of Botanists (SAAB) Conference recently held at the North West University in Potchefstroom. She was awarded the Hannes van Staden Prize for the best oral presentation by a PhD student, as well as the prestigious Best Young Scientist Award for the best oral paper by a young scientist. Her lecture, entitled The taxonomic value of fruit wall structure in the genus Crotalaria (Fabaceae, tribeCrotalarieae), explored the fruit wall anatomy of species in the genus Crotalaria (which is part of the legume family, Fabaceae) and compared the structure with species from other genera that are closely related. “It was found that the different types of fruit walls support the new classification of these genera. Crotalaria (more commonly known as rattle pod for the reason of the sound the ripe seeds produce in the inflated fruit) is a very large genus and consists of more than 700 species that are mostly distributed across the southern hemisphere. There are 64 species in Southern Africa,” said Le Roux.