Author: Roger HyamPage 4 of 5

I'm the Digital Information Development Officer at The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh

How big was our garden?

It has become second nature to look to Wikipedia for a summary of a subject. So when I was looking for a brief paragraph on the history of…

The Tjipetir mystery and plant taxonomy

Peter Wilkie, intrepid Sapotaceae botanist, has been blowing the trumpet for plant taxonomy in an article entitled What’s in a name? A mass of analysis in The Scotsman…

Magical Autumnal Mandala Images

Just like last year I missed the construction of the mandala which makes it even more magical to stumble on. It was constructed on Monday and these photos…

A short film about the Edible Gardening Project

Kathmandu: Software and Lunch at the Embassy

Although I trained as a botanist, picking up a PhD in Rhododendron in the 1990s, my principle role is now working with information about plants and how we…

Featured Image: Primula juliae

Primula juliae, a photo by small-things on Flickr. As an experiment we are featuring occasional images from our Flickr group as posts within Botanics Stories ~ starting with…

Garden portals for Exotic Matter controlled by the Enlightened

An alien force, the Shapers, is trying to manipulate our minds by filling the world with Exotic Matter (XM) via portals associated with works of art and other…

The Top Secret Botanics Apps!

Like a lot of jobs working in software development can be depressing as you are continually dealing with things that have gone wrong and rarely dwell on the…

RBGE HND/BSc Horticulture with Plantsmanship

  The education team have just produced a new video promoting the HND/BSc Horticulture with Plantsmanship. It is good to see the guys getting the message out there…

Another Small Cog In The Biodiversity Informatics Machine

There is a running joke in the 1990’s sitcom Friends that no one quite understands what Chandler Bing does for a living. They know it is “something to…

Blogging Presentation to Research Club

I’ve just had fun giving a presentation on the how and why of blogging to the Science Research Club. After a few slides about the benefits of writing…

Recycle Week 2013

It is Recycle Week 2013 and Kate Hughes has been organising some meetings for the staff to make sure everything goes in the right bin. Over 25 members…

Botanics Welcomes Korean Visitors

I was pleased to be able to entertain a party of five visitors from South Korea yesterday: Seok Young Kim,  Ryu jae wook, Kim Taeho, Kyu S. Oh,…

Stable Identifiers for Specimens Workshop

On the 4th & 5th of June 2013 we held a workshop at the Botanics on using stable HTTP URIs (sometimes called URLs) for specimens. This was the…

Nice Rhododendron recurvoides Boys

The Himalayan Garden (@The_Hutts) tweeted this great picture of two RBGE staff on a Rhododendron tour run by David Chamberlain. ‘the brothers hairy’ Chris Coatham and David Tricker…

Botanics Holds Triple Celebration

A triple celebration was held in the herbarium today, Thursday 14th March 2013, for three members of staff who have recently had their work recognized. From left to…

Mark Watson Medalled By RCHS

Mark Watson has been awarded the Royal Caledonian Horticultural Society’s Dr Patrick Neill Medal 2013 for his contribution to botany. Mark Watson is Editor in Chief of the…

CETAF – ISTC Meeting

I’m just back from a meeting I attended with Martin Pullan at the Royal Museum of Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium – hence the picture of the African…

Sacred Natural Sites: Conserving Plants and Culture

We had a fascinating talk from Robert Wild (Coordinator of the Sacred Natural Sites Initiative) today. Sacred Natural Sites are a network of primary conservation sites which are…

Another Test Post

This is a test to show that I can add a post as a user who has logged in through LDAP authentication. This is also a nice picture…