Category: Herbarium
There’s a first time for everything and last week the RBGE herbarium digitisation team hosted its first WeDigBio onsite transcription event! Worldwide Engagement for Digitising Biocollections, WeDigBio, is…
When the museum and library of the East India Company, following its inheritance by the India Office of the British government, was dispersed in 1879 its fragments were…
“It’ll stink! Tell me if you can’t stand it. My cat adores it.” Sweaty armpits, musty old rooms, smelly feet were all attempts at describing the smell of…
Robert Brown (1773-1858) Born in Montrose, Scotland in 1773, Robert Brown made his mark as a scientist in botany and palaeobotany. He is most famously known for his…
Scattered throughout the herbarium cabinets of Gramineae at Edinburgh are many sheets from the herbarium of the distinguished soldier and agrostologist William Munro, bearing a printed label ‘from…
Following a very successful first expedition on DigiVol with ‘Proteaceae of Australia’ we are launching our second project ‘Ericaceae of Australia’. Our first project was launched as part…
Brian Lawrence ‘Bill’ Burtt (1913-2008) began his career as a taxonomist at Kew Gardens, before coming to the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) in 1951. Throughout the course…
Help us unlock our collections data for use by researchers across the globe! As part of this year’s WeDigBio event, 19-22 October, we are launching a project to…
His Excellency Dr Durga Bahadur Subedi, Nepalese Ambassador to the United Kingdom, led a delegation from the Embassy in London to Scotland this weekend, visiting Edinburgh, Aberdeen and…
For many years I have been aware that in the herbarium of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (E) is more than one set of specimens collected in South…
A couple of years ago GBIF started including images for occurrence records in their biodiversity portal. Last week I was able to add images from our digital repository…
Over the past year, Glasgow based artist Simone Landwehr-Traxler has been studying some of the lichen specimens in the Herbarium at RBGE from the islands of Scotland. Her…
In May 2017 the Scottish sculptor Bobby Niven visited the Herbarium here at RBGE for a tour of the collection. He was on a fact finding mission as…
Background to the project. The advent of the era of Big Data has highlighted a truism in scientific discovery: an inference is only as good as the data…
One of the most talented Scottish surgeon-botanists ever to have worked in Asia was the Aberdonian William Jack (1795–1822), who, before succumbing to fever aged only 27, acted…
In the lead-up (or is it a wind-down?) to retirement I must clear my office, including four herbarium cabinets full of specimens laid aside from time to time…
A short film on Indian Forester, Scottish Laird and the personalities behind it.
David Harris Herbarium Curator My favourite thing in the Herbarium is the labels on the cabinets. They tell us what is in the cabinet and where we are…