Category: HerbariumPage 2 of 5

Towards 3 million specimens: Prunus spinosa – The Blackthorn Tree of British and Irish Folklore 

The following blog post was written by Courtney Kemnitz, a Digitiser in the RBGE Herbarium. Courtney is digitising the British Isles collection. This series of blog posts will…

Students’ Stories: “George Herbert Cave” by Dean Blake, 3rd Year Horticulture with Plantsmanship student at RBGE

George Herbert Cave of Windsor, southeast England (1872-1965), was a botanist and plant collector who rapidly rose to prominence in the Victorian era. He collected plants in Sikkim…

Towards 3 million specimens: Caroline Henry

Written by Rebecca Camfield, one of the members of our digitisation team. During digitisation you come across many interesting treasures and stories. This is just one of them….

Digging into the details through digitisation: the poppy family

Our current programme of digitisation, funded by the RBGE Foundation, seeks to digitise 420,000 specimens from our collections leading to 1 million records (approximately one third of the…

Grow and Magnify: An Illustrator’s Journey with Mycologists and Fungi

By Carole Papion My journey around Edinburgh Botanic Gardens started about four years ago, where in 2018 I enrolled in a practice-based PhD at the Edinburgh College of…

The Life and Achievements of Dr Archibald Hewan

In the spirit of Black History Month, we are sharing the story, otherwise untold, of Dr Archibald Hewan, a 19th century Black doctor and naturalist. Born in Jamaica…

Ian Hedge

18 August 1928 – 7 August 2022 Ian Charleson Hedge, who passed away peacefully last month at the age of 93, was an exceptional botanist and long-time lynchpin…

Stories from the Biomes: Data Capture

In an age where 40% of the world’s plants are faced with extinction, the recording of data is more important now than ever. Documenting, describing, and researching the properties of plants enhances their chances of survival; how can we protect what we don’t know we have?

An Update on the Flora of Myanmar Project

A collaborative effort has seen the complete digitisation of herbarium specimens of vascular plants from Myanmar, complemented by data standardisation and georeferencing.

Naming of Primula species from the 1921 British Reconnaissance Expedition to Mount Everest

In Wade Davis’ account of the ‘Mallory’ expeditions to Mount Everest1, there is a brief but intriguing reference to the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. In a section describing…

Choose your transcription path through people and plants

The RBGE Herbarium and citizen research Since 2017 the RBGE Herbarium has enlisted the help of volunteers to undertake the transcription of collection label information from herbarium specimens….

Early botanising in Upper Teesdale

by Frank Horsman A number of botanists have been overlooked in the botanical recognition of Upper Teesdale. My aim is to put this right. The unrecognised botanical pioneer…

Erophila verna on a black ground: a miniature painting in the Lightfoot Herbarium at Kew

By Henry Noltie In April 2017 I visited a memorable exhibition at the Yale Center for British Art at New Haven, CT. It was  entitled ‘Enlightened Princesses’ and…

The Collectors of the Wallich (or East India Company) Herbarium. Part IV

By Henry Noltie & Mark Watson (continued from Part III) Military Men, Society Ladies and the French The Army Officers The violence inflicted upon India by the EIC…

The Collectors of the Wallich (or East India Company) Herbarium. Part III

By Henry Noltie & Mark Watson (continued from Part II) Horticulturists and Civil Servants The designation ‘professional’, which, during the twentieth century, increasingly came to be used in…

The Collectors of the Wallich (or East India Company) Herbarium. Part II

By Henry Noltie & Mark Watson (continued from Part I) The Surgeons (and a Vet) Perhaps unsurprisingly the second largest number of specimens in the Herbarium came from…

The Collectors of the Wallich (or East India Company) Herbarium

By Henry Noltie & Mark Watson Nathaniel Wallich was one of the most significant superintendents of the Calcutta Botanic Garden (now the AJC Bose Indian Botanic Garden, Howrah),…

Join the expedition team exploring the Flora of Britain and Ireland for WeDigBio 2020

Join us virtually as we take part in the 2020 edition of the Worldwide Engagement for Digitising Biocollections, WeDigBio.

Workshop invitation: After the crowds disperse: crowdsourced data rediscovered and researched

***Deadline for expressions of interest extended to 30th October 17:00 UTC.*** You put your images in, your data come out – that’s what crowdsourcing’s all about! It sounds…

Join us on the first in a series of virtual expeditions of Britain and Ireland

The collections from Britain and Ireland held within the RBGE Herbarium are estimated to number over 500,000 specimens of cryptogams (algae, fungi, lichens and mosses), ferns, gymnosperms and…