Every day, hundreds of visitors pour into the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, many of them through our East Gate. To do this, one must pass through two sets…
The RBGE Archives do not just hold papers – correspondence, administration and photographs – we also have a number of objects; plant models, gardening tools and camera equipment…
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…
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….
Ross Eudall was born in London on the 29th December 1924, an only child. Ross’s father was a butler, which led to Ross spending time in Kilmarnock, Inverness…
Scotland’s native wild apple tree (Malus sylvestris) is an attractive, solitary and often unassuming tree with a big history. It is a key player in the domestication of the apple, with Malus domestica, and all its many cultivars, boasting M.sylvestris as one of its progenitors.
It was a heady fortnight of frantic networking and tough negotiating in the Glasgow rain. But did the twenty-sixth Conference of the Parties (COP26) to the United Nations…
1939-1945 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 of the…
This month the world looks to Glasgow for signs of progress with tackling the climate emergency. Although the negotiations must focus on the transition to a low-carbon economy…
After nearly 28 years at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE), Frieda Christie, our Microscopy Lab manager, will be retiring at the end of September. To celebrate Frieda’s…
The Garden’s 2021 Harvest Festival includes a short self-guided trail on the origins and future of the apple linked to work on the Darwin Tree of Life project….
Here at RBGE as well as researching and growing lots of wonderful and precious plants from around the world we also put lots of work into the conservation…
By Henry Noltie A melancholy arboricultural event took place in the Doune Terrace garden on 26 April 2021: the felling of a stately wych elm (Ulmus glabra). The…
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…
I am fortunate to be able to work with archive material produced by people like plant collector George Forrest (1873-1932), who travelled extensively in Yunnan province, southwest China…
A party from RBGE was invited to see the recent restoration work undertaken by Janis Binnie on the plantings in the lower part of Leny Glen, Callander, Perthshire….
In the first of these Botanics Stories we introduced the weaver botanist John Duncan and his friend Charles Black. In this blogpost we give some details about John’s…
The visitor On the 17th of November 1874 an elderly working weaver – ‘compelled in his destitution’ – applied for poor relief in the Aberdeenshire parish of Alford….
By Henry Noltie On my daily constitutional to Wardie Bay the ivy-leaved toadflax, Cymbalaria muralis, is currently making a fine display in the lime mortar of the sandstone…