Author: Max ColemanPage 9 of 10

Really Wild Veg – Cruickshank Botanic Garden

Joshua Pereira, a 3rd year undergraduate studying for a degree in Biology at the University of Aberdeen, is taking on responsibility for the Really Wild Veg plots at…

New Maltese Fern

Stephen Mifsud, botanist and former MSc student at the Garden, has discovered a new fern on the island of Malta. The fern is a new subspecies of Polypodium…

Really Wild Veg – Carrot problems

The carrot trial plots for the Really Wild Veg project were sown on 22nd April this year. Carrots can be notoriously slow to germinate and we have found…

Moth trapping in the Garden

Thanks to the enthusiasm of James and Thomas from the local Developing Ecological Surveying Skills (DESS) team at the SWT office near the Garden there is now a…

Really Wild Veg – 2014 growing trials

Building on the success of the Really Wild Veg trials last year we will be doing further growing trials this year. Last year we grew beet, radish and…

Plants, people and paper in Nepal

At this time of year the early signs of spring are very welcome. In the Chilean Terrace behind the main glasshouse range is an attractive pink Daphne from…

Tree Hug record still hanging in the balance

A Record Attempt to stage the world’s largest tree hug, held on Sunday 1st December, has stormed past Forestry Commission England’s 702 tree huggers which is the official…

Is it a world record?

Tree huggers converged on 11 sites around Scotland on the 1st of December to mark the end of National Tree Week and to try to break a world…

Glasshouse Plant Profile: Bamboo

Bamboos are essentially a group of toughened grasses. This particular giant bamboo is known as Bambusa vulgaris. It is an open clump-forming species with striped stems and dark…

Calling all tree huggers

The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh is putting out the call for people to help break the world record for tree hugging. The Garden is joining forces with ten…

Timber buildings reveal lost world of lichen species

Lichens are a specialised group of fungi that are useful indicators of the state of the environment. The loss of various species sensitive to air pollution created by…

Tree felling works

If you were in the Garden last week you would have heard the sound of the arboretum team dismantling a large sweet chestnut. It is always a great…

Giant Chilean rhubarb becomes a work of art

The herbarium at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh is an archive of preserved plants that is also a hive of activity; botanists busying themselves describing new species or…

Cave-dwelling plant from Chile flowers for the first time at RBGE

Valdivia gayana is a diminutive woody perennial from Chile that could be mistaken for a dandelion when not in flower. In fact, the local Chilean name ‘Planta de…

Edinburgh’s rare plants helped by local action

Holyrood Park is home to a great variety of plants. Among them are some that are relative rarities and these are carefully monitored by the Historic Scotland Ranger…

A celebration of apples

Apples are a feast for the senses. The variety of size and colour is incredible. Small varieties have fruits little bigger than a golf ball while the aptly…

Really Wild Veg – Taste, productivity and disease results

By domesticating wild plants to create our familiar crops we have selected desirable traits like disease resistance, yield and flavour. The Really Wild Veg project has been examining…

Botanic gardens conserve crop diversity too

The importance of conserving crop genetic resources, including the species regarded as Crop Wild Relatives (CWRs), is a subject that has featured quite a bit in this blog…

Really Wild Veg – September 17 Update

Now that harvest is a major activity in the Demonstration Garden the final crops in the Really Wild Veg project are approaching maturity. This project has been growing…

Benmore redwood avenue celebrates 150th birthday

This year is the 150th birthday of the magnificent avenue of redwoods at Benmore. The story behind how this species reached Britain involves a race to bring back…