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…
Moray Place is the dodecagonal circus, 325 yards in diameter, which forms the centrepiece of that masterpiece of buildings and gardens designed by James Gillespie (Graham) in the…
Coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara L.) is found throughout Scotland. It is among the early spring flowers. Over the years people have used this ‘common’ plant in a number of ways.
By Henry Noltie Rituals to mark the unrolling of the seasons have always seemed important, but never more so than as reference points by which to punctuate the…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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),…