Category: SciencePage 12 of 33
Latest science blog posts from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
Klaudia Jaworska is in her third year at Edinburgh Napier University, studying International Festivals and Events Management and Marketing. As part of her course, she is currently carrying out a work placement in RBGE’s Public Engagement Department. Here, Klaudia shares her experience from the morning of Siân Bowen’s micro-conference at RBGE.
“Hey Zoë, we’ve found a Pinguicula!” “I doubt it, they don’t grow in Belize.” “Well, this is definitely a Pinguicula.” With that conversation shouted across a hillside, we…
Working in the dry forests of the Marañón valley in Peru can be pretty intense. Firstly, as you might expect, it can get exceptionally hot. While clouds might…
RBGE scientists contribute to a landmark study suggesting that increasing global temperatures may cause both Amazon and African rainforests to become net sources, rather than sinks, of carbon…
After Hortus Malabaricus: Sensing and Presencing Rare Plants marks the culmination of my four-year collaboration with the Herbarium at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE). Having held my first solo exhibition in Scotland at Inverleith House at RBGE in 1995, it is wonderful to be able to exhibit here once again. In 2017, I was awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship to carry out the project. The Leverhulme Trust is known for supporting experimental proposals with an emphasis on outward facing journeys. The journey that the award facilitated has certainly been extraordinary – opening up possibilities to work with botanists, ecologists, historical researchers, cultural geographers, taxonomists and curators. It has allowed encounters with rare plants in darkened herbaria and light-filled South Indian forests and swamps; epistemologies used to ‘reveal’ specimens and sensory differences between plants’ live and preserved states.
The Scottish native wild apple (Malus sylvestris), like the Scottish wild cat, could be regarded as being under threat from interbreeding with its domesticated counterpart. In the cat’s…
The Think Plastic- materials and making exhibition which has just opened is a collaboration between artists Lorna Fraser, Carol Sinclair, Fiona Hutchison, Fiona Pilgrim and Carla Edwards and…
At the core of RBGE’s scientific mission is to “explore” the world of plants and on the 350th anniversary of our foundation, the herbarium’s 3 million specimens from…
Today in the staff conference Simon was asked the number of threatened plants that the RBGE is growing. This is a dynamic figure as plants at the RBGE…
The simple thalloid liverwort Aneura has become a flagship genus for DNA barcoding at RBGE. Only a single widespread species, Aneura pinguis, is traditionally recognized in the UK,…
1914-1919 The Service Roll is different from the Roll of Honour in that it shows the names & a short statement of service of all members of staff…
We Will Remember Them Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh Roll of Honour, 1914–1919 At the outbreak of war in August 1914 the appeal for H.M. Forces met with ready…
Today we have reached a new landmark with half a million herbarium specimens imaged and freely available online on our herbarium catalogue.
A recently described moss, Sphagnum divinum, the Divine Bog-moss, has been discovered in Britain and Ireland, though the only Scottish site yet found has sadly been lost. Its taxonomic discovery has a long history, starting over 250 years ago with a French explorer in southern South America.
All plants have stories. The Botanics over its 350 years has managed to create many, from intrepid tales of plant hunters to discovering plants new to science. Some…
This unassuming section of trunk was sitting on a desk in the herbarium office after being “discovered” in the back of a carpological cupboard. It arrived in our…
It will be of no surprise that an attractive plant has been found in this particular genus. One in which has been so highly regarded by the garden,…
Seeds are phenomenal structures which have adapted incredible ways to disperse. One of the of the most eye catching seed pods in the garden at this time of…
In the forests of central Africa there is an amazing species of tree. It is called Gilbertiodendron dewevrei. Fortunately, the people who live there have shorter names for…
Geography, and particularly climate, have distinguished the extreme western parts of Scotland from the rest of the country for thousands of years. Many of our rarest plant species…