Coffee Coffea Arabica Family: Rubiaceae Description First introduced to Europe in 1583, the Arabica coffee tree, which grows to nearly 30 feet high, produces a crop of…
As part of our hybrid capture project, we sampled from an Inga umbellifera specimen that was collected about 180 years ago, by Andrew Mathews, in Peru in 1835….
The genus Aitchisoniella contains a single species, A. himalayensis, which was described by Pakistani botanist Professor Shiv Ram Kashyap from plants that he collected in Mussoorie, Uttarakhand, India…
Inverleith House is celebrating three decades of contemporary art and botanical exhibitions at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh with a presentation of rarely seen posters and invitation cards…
Lichens are extraordinary organisms. Easily overlooked, and often un-noticed by many people, lichens colonise trees and many other surfaces (walls, pavements, railings) in our urban areas. Did you…
Plant diversity does not have to be far-flung and exotic to be worth studying; even within Scotland, there are unanswered questions about plant distributions. Growing in our towns and…
Inverleith House As Inverleith House celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, we have been looking back into our own exhibitions archive and beyond when the house was the…
Just one of the amazing things about lichens is… You don’t have to go to a tropical rainforest, the Caledonian Forest or the far west coast of Scotland…
Outdoor Air pollution Air pollution is a huge global environmental health issue, as recognised by the World Health Organisation. The air quality in Scotland is generally very good,…
The idea formed quite early on in my TCV Natural Talent Traineeship based at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh to develop a specific tool kit to help people…
One of the most recognisable groups in the bryophytes, the complex thalloid liverwort genus Marchantia, has just become a bit larger. We have sunk Preissia and Bucegia into…
In the past I have written about botanical ‘swagger prints’ – large-format illustrations commissioned at least in part to boost the ego of the commissioner. At RBGE (from…
In order ‘to explore, conserve and explain the world of plants’ we need to build up our collections, both of living plants and herbarium specimens, especially from under-collected…
Here at Inverleith House we are very much enjoying Pablo Bronstein’s botanically-inspired artwork, The Birth of the Skyscraper from Botanical Architecture, 2015 (detail), and Early Industrial Landscape, 2016…
Bertha Chandler (1885-1961) In 1901 did Andrew Carnegie know, by donating $10 million to create the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, that his legacy would assist…