Category: SciencePage 30 of 33

Latest science blog posts from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh

The Anderson Brothers of Calcutta

While looking for monuments to people with Indian connections in the Dean Cemetery recently, I was intrigued to see the letters ‘FLS’ emerging from the fringes of an…

Mystery stone

Have you ever wondered what the stone situated to the west of the beech hedge at RBGE is?  Have you even noticed it’s there? The lump of red…

Sir George Watt (1851-1930)

Born on the 24th of April 1851 in Old Meldrum, Aberdeenshire, Scotland. He was educated at the Grammar School, King’s College and Marischal College, Aberdeen, and later attended…

New Maltese Fern

Stephen Mifsud, botanist and former MSc student at the Garden, has discovered a new fern on the island of Malta. The fern is a new subspecies of Polypodium…

Really Wild Veg – 2014 growing trials

Building on the success of the Really Wild Veg trials last year we will be doing further growing trials this year. Last year we grew beet, radish and…

More on the importance of bryophytes

As a follow-on to my post about why bryophytes are important is this thoughtful piece by Dr Janice Glime, author of the comprehensive and freely downloadable book Bryophyte…

Why bryophytes matter

As someone who has used taxpayers’ money to fund research on bryophytes (the collective term for mosses, liverworts and hornworts), ‘But why do bryophytes actually matter?’ is one…

Plants, people and paper in Nepal

At this time of year the early signs of spring are very welcome. In the Chilean Terrace behind the main glasshouse range is an attractive pink Daphne from…

Plant drawings launch a celebration of 200 years of Nepal-UK relations

The celebration of 200 years of Nepal-UK relations was launched on 6th January 2014 with an exhibition of natural history drawings made by Dr Francis Buchanan-Hamilton in 1802-3….

Garden portals for Exotic Matter controlled by the Enlightened

An alien force, the Shapers, is trying to manipulate our minds by filling the world with Exotic Matter (XM) via portals associated with works of art and other…

84° East somewhere in the Nepal Himalaya.

In biogeographic circles everyone likes a good line and no I’m not talking about illicit substance abuse. Biogeographers draw lines on maps to divide geographic area and to…

The Bluebell debate

When the RBGE announced the results for the public vote on Scotland’s Big 5 Favourite Plants the Scottish Bluebell came second to the Scot’s Pine. Since then, there…

Timber buildings reveal lost world of lichen species

Lichens are a specialised group of fungi that are useful indicators of the state of the environment. The loss of various species sensitive to air pollution created by…

World Flora Online Conference

The first meeting of the Consortium for the World Flora Online was held at RBGE on the 14th and 15th November 2013. This is the latest in a…

Happy 100th Birthday to the RBGE Guild

2013 marks the 100th anniversary of the foundation of the RBGE Guild. The primary role of the Guild was to be an agent of social intercourse and support…

Seaweed Collections Online

We have recently databased and imaged selected genera of British Algae held in the herbarium as part of a project run by the Natural History Museum, London. The…

Giant Chilean rhubarb becomes a work of art

The herbarium at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh is an archive of preserved plants that is also a hive of activity; botanists busying themselves describing new species or…

Colonel and Mrs Walker: Ceylon 1830–1838

A new RBGE publication documents, and pays belated tribute, to a pair of intrepid and enterprising botanists. The latest in a series of studies by Henry Noltie on…

Poisoned Arrows Arrives

Do you want to escape the cold and rain for some African warmth this weekend? You can join a walking storytelling promenade performance in the Glasshouses this Saturday…

Botanic gardens conserve crop diversity too

The importance of conserving crop genetic resources, including the species regarded as Crop Wild Relatives (CWRs), is a subject that has featured quite a bit in this blog…