Category: SciencePage 20 of 36

Latest science blog posts from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh

Untangling asetate Weissia species in the UK

Dr Des Callaghan spends rather a lot of his time chasing after rare things. He’s an environmental consultant with many strings to his bow, but a particular specialisation…

The Battle of Glen Tilt

“was ye at the Glen o’ Tilt,An’ did the shindy see, man? John Hutton Balfour, Regius Keeper at the RBGE and Professor of Botany at the University of…

Project Soothe is Three

Last week Project Soothe celebrated their third birthday by launching a film celebrating the exhibition we held together here at the Botanics in 2017 – a double celebration!…

Botanical discovery in Nepal

In August 2017 Dr Colin Pendry led an expedition to Bajura, a remote district of Nepal. This short film is about the challenges of reaching the higher altitudes…

Unlocking the power of poo

A short video by Dr Linda Neaves about the challenges of finding giant panda poo in the mountains of China, and how poo samples can unlock the mystery…

The liverwort genus Haplomitrium

Life gets littered with untold stories; here’s one that did get told, briefly, and then got forgotten. It was told at the Botany meeting in Austin in August…

Bryologising at Benmore

Four years ago, we took an overnight trip to one of the four gardens of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh: Benmore, in Argyll (Sunday 2nd – Monday 3rd February…

The Systematics Association 2019 Biennial meeting (or, Things to do in Bristol)

I can fairly safely predict that next summer’s top UK destination for the discerning systematist will be the English city of Bristol. Having never been before, I headed…

An expedition to the Cairngorms to rescue the rare and endangered Alpine Sow-thistle

Cicerbita alpina, colloquially named Alpine Sow-thistle is a Nationally Rare plant that is confined within the UK to Scotland, where it is at the very western edge of…

Can’t see the begonias for the trees – hidden diversity in Kalimantan

Borneo lies at the heart of Southeast Asia, and has some of the most diverse equatorial rainforest in the world. However a considerable portion of this diversity remains…

Looking for Prumnopitys andina in gardens around the world

Martin Gardner (@RBGE_ICCP ) is looking for cultivated trees of the threatened Chilean Plum Yew – Prumnopitys andina  If you are growing Prumnopitys andina or know of it growing in cultivation…

A violet for Walt

The Shawnee National Forest skirts the midwestern town of Carbondale, which is home to one of the campuses of Southern Illinois University. It’s also one of the prettiest…

A visit to the Californian type locality for the hornwort Phaeoceros proskaueri

One of North America’s endemic hornworts, Phaeoceros proskaueri Stotler, Crand.-Stotl. & W.T.Doyle [also known as Paraphymatoceros proskaueri (Stotler, Crand.-Stotl. & W.T.Doyle) J.C.Villarreal & Cargill] was described from plants collected in the Monterey Bay…

An expedition to Perthshire to rescue the rare and endangered Polygonatum verticillatum

Polygonatum verticillatum (also known as Whorled Solomon’s Seal) is a rare and endangered perennial plant of steep sided wooded gorges; now only found at nine locations in the…

Project Soothe Exhibition Report

We have finished pulling together the results from the Project Soothe Exhibition that we held here at RBGE in September and October last year. If you are one…

Plant destroyers in action

Visitors to the gardens will be familiar with the foot baths at all entrances. These foot baths are just one of the measures we take to protect our…

Complex thalloid Asterella lateralis from Panama’s Volcano

During a family holiday to Santiago, Panama in June/July 2011, we snuck in a short bryologising trip, first heading west along the Pan-American Highway, then north, to the…

Snowbird, Utah – Marchantia (Preissia) quadrata from the Rockies

The Botany 2004 meeting was in Snowbird, Utah – a chance to see a different part of the United States (and, of course, to present our research to…

Gyrothyra underwoodiana from Vancouver Island

In April 2004, I flew north from Illinois to met up with a botanical friend, Dr Zoe Badcock. Our meeting point was Vancouver, British Columbia; from there we…

The plants of our lives

There’s something quite melancholy about going back through all the little paper packets of voucher specimens, remembering who and where you were when you collected them, and thinking…