William Somervell Mitchell, East India Company surgeon, and briefly Madras Naturalist

Born Lamington, 2 May 1780; died Madras, 24 November 1819 When discussing the collectors of the ‘Wallich’ Herbarium, William Somervell Mitchell was not included as his collections were…

Towards 3 million: Acanthaceae

The following blog was written by Rebecca Camfield a digitiser in the Herbarium. Since 2021 we have increased our digitisation capacity with the goal of getting to 1…

Granny and her visitors – a specimen with ‘cult following’

There is a box in the RBGE Archives marked ‘Granny’ which usually begs the question of what’s inside? The following blog, researched and written by RBGE Garden Guide…

Worst-ever fire season shows the urgency of training in plant identification skills

Orange sunlight filtered through the pall of smoke from nearby fires and leaves of the Guanacaste tree as students examined the tree in front of them. It might…

Why latin names just aren’t good enough anymore

This is the second post in a series about the Taxon Name Linking Service project. The process of combining biodiversity data from multiple sources currently starts with matching…

Hunting the ghostwort – a bryological Halloween tale

Aneura mirabilis, aka the ghostwort, is a very strange liverwort indeed. And it’s not as if liverworts in general have a reputation for being the most “vanilla” of…

Towards 3 million: Linaceae

The following blog was written by Linde Hess a digitiser in the Herbarium. Since 2021 we have increased our digitisation capacity with the goal of getting to 1…

A Not So Silent Archive

by Dr Amanda Thomson I was sitting in the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh Library, looking through F.R. Irvine’s archive boxes. Irvine was a botanist who was born in…

Towards 3 million: Schlegeliaceae, Martyniaceae, Byblidaceae & Stemonuraceae

The following blog was written by Rebecca Camfield a digitiser in the Herbarium. Since 2021 we have increased our digitisation capacity with the goal of getting to 1…

Scottish Plant Recovery updates

Monthly updates on the progress being made to restore the fortunes of some Scotland’s most threatened plants are now available online. The updates, produced by the Garden’s Scottish…

No more sow-thistle blues

During summer 2024 a small group of staff from the Garden’s Scottish Plant Recovery team, NatureScot and National Trust for Scotland achieved something which would have been unimaginable…

Mercedes Chanek – a hidden Indigenous plant collector from Belize

Surprising is the only word. The list of important female plant collectors from Belize is pretty short. So, when someone emailed out of the blue, about an Indigenous…

Interpreting fungi in the Garden

The Garden’s Visitor Welcome Team is busy deploying a new set of interpretation panels to highlight the seasonal interest that fungi bring to the Garden. The normally overlooked…

Towards 3 million: Iridaceae

The following blog was written by Iain Ratter a digitiser in the Herbarium. Since 2021 we have increased our digitisation capacity with the goal of getting to 1…

Daughters of tailors and slop shops: social snobbery and botanical art in early nineteenth-century Madras

I recently acquired two botanical watercolours by Janet Dick (1774–1857) painted in Madras in 1802 and 1803. Competent enough in execution, the main reason for buying them was…

Towards 3 million: Ochnaceae, Medusagynaceae and Quiinaceae

The following blog was written by Linde Hess a digitiser in the Herbarium. Since 2021 we have increased our digitisation capacity with the goal of getting to 1…

Uber ants

As part of our work on Scottish Plant Recovery we have been bulking up the seed of small cow-wheat (Melampyrum sylvaticum) in readiness for translocation back to the…

Towards 3 million: Proteaceae

The following blog was written by Iain Ratter a digitiser in the Herbarium. Since 2021 we have increased our digitisation capacity with the goal of getting to 1…

A new species of shrub discovered in the dry Andean valleys of Peru and Ecuador

In the deep, isolated valleys of the Andes there are still many plants that have never been described by science. These valleys are hot and dry, despite the…

Towards 3 million: Lamiaceae

The following blog was written by Rebecca Camfield a digitiser in the Herbarium. Since 2021 we have increased our digitisation capacity with the goal of getting to 1…