The following blog was written by Rebecca Camfield a digitiser in the Herbarium.

Since 2021 we have increased our digitisation capacity reaching 1 million specimens imaged in August 2024. Each digitiser is assigned a family of plants to work through. This series of blogs will spotlight the families that have been completed by a member of the team.

This is an update to a previous Botanics Story: Forrest’s Giant Rhododendron

Due to current digitisation focused on the Ericaceae family, the Rhododendron herbarium collections are being databased and imaged. Considering the genus takes up roughly 100 of our herbarium cupboards it is a sizable task. However, whilst working through the Chinese specimens of Rhododendron protistum subsp. giganteum (Forrest ex Tagg.) D.F.Chamb. two interesting specimens were spotted – Forrest 29465 and 29466. They mention being collected from a tree felled on 15th March 1931. This happens to be the date stamped into the large cross-section of Rhododendron sitting in our archives.

Forrest 29466 has an excerpt from a letter sent by Mrs Forrest discussing her husband’s intention to take a cross-section from the giants his men had found and send it back to Edinburgh.

 “He hopes to go to Hon-to at the head of the Shweli valley to get a photograph if possible, of some of the giant specimens of Rh. giganteum. He sent 10 of his men there recently and they brought back specimens and information that in a new locality they had come on huge strands of the species. They informed him they saw specimens 4.5-5ft in diameter! He was sending out a party of his men the next week to cut one down of the giants! and to saw a cross-section of the thickest portion of the trunk to send home for the Garden Museum.”

The label also states ‘Taken from the same tree as the previous No. 29465’ whereas the label for 29465 states ‘This and the specimen under the following number 29466, were taken from the tree from which the section sent to the Edinburgh Botanic Gardens was cut. G.F.’

Thanks to the digitisation of the herbarium, we have been able to link relink the specimens to the Rhododendron cross-section in our archive after nearly 100 years!