Author: Max ColemanPage 3 of 10
Awareness that Britain is a rainforest nation is finally growing. Environmental organisations are doing their best to get Britain’s rainforests the recognition they deserve. But one man, Guy…
Diversity is the basis of resilience. But we tend to focus on the number of species or habitats and not the diversity within a single species. This is…
The apple is a symbol of fertility in Norse and Germanic pagan tradition. So, there is some irony in the fact that work by the Scottish Plant Recovery…
I imagine that releasing a red kite or a golden eagle as part of a species reintroduction programme is a pretty emotional moment. That animal, raised in captivity,…
Plant blindness – the inability to see or notice the plants in one’s own environment. Elisabeth schussler & James wandersee, 1998 Surprisingly, for me at least, some people…
It’s the season of mellow fruitfulness and the Scottish Plant Recovery project team has been busy squashing the bright orange/red berries of the Arran whitebeams (Hedlundia species) to…
Recovery of threatened plant populations requires attention to a lot of small details and sometimes this includes working with things that are literally small. Flowers can be small….
Taxonomists – those who classify and name species – are sometimes grumbled about by gardeners because familiar plant names are changed, apparently out of the blue and for…
The marsh saxifrage (Saxifraga hirculus) is a golden jewel of our bogs and marshlands. Each small plant bears one or two flowers, bright golden yellow and often dotted…
This is an exciting time for threatened plant recovery as new opportunities are emerging through ambitious large-scale nature recovery projects Aline Finger, Scottish plant recovery project lead Early…
Caught in the process of unfurling its first pair of leaves, this newly germinated wych elm seedling looks delicate. But it is in the vanguard of a new…
Seeing the next generation doing well gives us hope for the future, and this goes for plants as much as people. This is particularly true when the plants…
The reality of climate change is that we will lose almost all our large wych elm trees after a long history in the British Isles spanning some 9,000…
The small adder’s-tongue fern has a single leaf not much bigger than your little fingernail. Apart from this easily overlooked leaf, the only other visible part of the…
On the 17 and 18 June 2022 naturalists and the public came together at Little Sparta, a garden in the Pentland Hills 25 miles southwest of Edinburgh, to…
The artist Ian Hamilton Finlay created a garden in the hills near Biggar that he called Little Sparta in response to the characterization of Edinburgh as the Athens…
We assign human qualities to animals without a second thought. The wise owl and the cunning fox will produce a smile, even though we know this is just…
This month the world looks to Glasgow for signs of progress with tackling the climate emergency. Although the negotiations must focus on the transition to a low-carbon economy…
The Garden’s 2021 Harvest Festival includes a short self-guided trail on the origins and future of the apple linked to work on the Darwin Tree of Life project….
Seaweed has been a traditional foraged food in coastal Scottish communities for as long as people have inhabited the coast. Despite being nutritious and abundant it became associated…