Category: Garden WildlifePage 26 of 68

More power from Dawyck Hydro.

The Hydro power scheme at Dawyck Botanic Garden was officially launched on the 19th May 2014 by Fergus Ewing MSP, The Minister for Business, Energy and Tourism. It…

Out of season beauty

In the corner of the QMM garden is a columnar tree full of lightly scented musty white flowers. Awash with flowers this Hoheria populnea is a deciduous member…

Calliandra ( red powder puff)

Red powder puff (Calliandra haematocephala) Family: Leguminosae Description: This is an evergreen shrub or small tree of 4 to 5 metres, which will grow as wide as it…

Sky blue under a leaden sky

Despite the past week of storms, rain and battering inclement weather this scandent Delphinium sp. has proved resilient. It has sparse growth but from this is thrown a…

Have I Got News for Yew

The idea that a story about a male yew tree producing a female branch would go viral and attract massive media attention would have seemed highly unlikely a…

October 2015 Garden Wildlife Report

October continued the long quiet dry spell in the first half of the month with unseasonally warm days. The second half of the month was a little more…

September 2015 Garden Wildlife Report

September was another largely dry, bright sunny month, with significant rainfall on only three days. Five more species were added to the Garden’s list, bringing it up to…

Botanics Sparrowhawks – Added Inspiration

Image: Duncan Marquiss, Search Film, 2015 (Film Still). Courtesy of the artists. Despite being a quiet spell for observing Sparrowhawk activity in the garden, it is still possible…

Oldest yew tree switches sex

The Fortingall Yew in Perthshire is a tree of international renown as potentially the oldest individual tree in Europe. It has been suggested that it could be as…

Autumn Screenings at Inverleith House: Anne-Marie Copestake and Duncan Marquiss

Inverleith House presents two artist films that consider the natural world and scientific enquiry as part of a new short season of screenings reflecting upon the gallery’s unique…

Plants from the Woods and Forests of Chile – linking our collections

To tie in with the launch of ‘Plants from the Woods and Forests of Chile’, we wanted to look at some of the material from our herbarium and…

Botanics Sparrowhawks – Related Projects

I have had some good encounters with Sparrowhawks over the last few weeks. I posted about one fairly recently and in the last couple of days I also…

A memory

The specimen of Sorbus microphylla agg fruiting profusely in the copse was collected in the Langtang National Park area of Nepal. This is the area devastated by the…

A time to plant

With deciduous leaves colouring and dormancy on its way, now is the time to consider tree planting. Take due account of the weather. Depending on the size of…

Hipster

Planted at the entrance to the John Hope Gateway is Rosa hirtula. A native to Japan where it is found growing in association with, amongst others, Larix kaempferi,…

New leafhopper species for Scotland found at RBGE

On 17 September 2015 I photographed a leafhopper on alder (Alnus glutinosa) next to the small pond near the Botanic Cottage site. The leafhopper had a very distinctive…

Botanics Sparrowhawks – Autumn Action

Although now well past the breeding season if you are lucky you may be treated to a close encounter with one of the sparrowhawks in the garden. They…

A glorious autumn

Colour this autumn has been unrivalled. The warmth from the sun and the dry season have combined to extend the floral season. Take a last walk through the…

Plants from Nepal – a new area at Edinburgh to show them off

There have been Nepalese species growing at RBGE for as long as anyone can remember and at the moment there are 529 accessions of plants which either come…