Category: Other NewsPage 11 of 51

Stories not categories under anything else

The seeds of Dead Man’s Finger

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…

My first taxonomic revision – experiences from the Edinburgh herbarium – by Julia Wellsow

Desplatsia is a genus of small trees growing in the forests of West and Central Africa. Their fruits are rather large and adored by elephants. There was some…

How many people does it take to revise a genus?

In 1994 I was in a forest in the Central African Republic standing in front of a tree. I remember the moment well. I turned to my companion,…

#NationalTreeWeek @TheBotanics 2019 What are we planting this year?

National Tree Week marks the traditional start of the winter tree planting season. We are celebrating from the 23rd November to the 1st December. “National Tree Week is…

October 2019 Garden Wildlife Report

Yet again, October 2019 was both sunnier (117.4 hours, 117% of average) and wetter (106.2 mm, 134% of average) than an average Edinburgh October.  Like September, most of…

Celebrating Apple Season

21st October is Apple Day, an autumn holiday created by the charity Common Ground in 1990 to celebrate and protect the rich variety of apple cultivars across the…

The beautiful bemba forest

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…

Lindenberg’s Featherwort – liverwort child of the Atlantic

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…

September 2019 Garden Wildlife Report

September 2019, perhaps predictably, followed the pattern of previous months this summer. Once again it was both sunnier (141.4 hours, 129% of average) and wetter (79.4 mm, 161%…

Priority Glasshouse Works at RBGE

It seems that each year we uncover more serious deterioration of our ageing infrastructure which requires immediate action to ensure the safety of the Living Collection but also…

Autumn Gentiana

Autumn is a time of change, the leaves are starting to turn shades of yellow, orange and red. However, one plant steals the show and is of significant…

Evidence, action, inspiration – how nature-based solutions help combat the climate emergency

This week (7th-13th October 2019) is Scotland’s Climate Week, which this year comes at a decisive time for our planet, its people and its biodiversity. As UN Secretary-General…

Why I love Volunteering for Microsculpture & Talking About Insect Vision

As a life-long lover of insects, I jumped at the opportunity to volunteer at the Microsulpture exhibition at the Inverleith House Gallery at the Botanics .  I had…

August 2019 Garden Wildlife Report

Summer 2019 seems to have been following a pattern, for August 2019, like July, was a month when both sunshine (201.7 hours, 179% of average) and rainfall (140.8…

July 2019 Garden Wildlife Report

July 2019 has been described as the warmest globally on record. It was also a warm month at the Botanics, due in part to an intense heatwave in…

Yew trees, the Canaries and a Darwinian Connection in a Perthshire Churchyard

The kirkyard at Fortingall in Perthshire has, for several centuries, been a magnet for tourists with an arboricultural bent – for the sake of its ancient yew. This…

RBGE’s World War Two Memorial

Situated beneath the Memorial to the members of staff at RBGE who gave their lives during the First World War is a smaller, but no less poignant memorial…

Amazon fires; RBGE action

The current, unprecedented scale of fire in the Amazon, the largest area of tropical rainforest in the world, a biodiversity hotspot, and a crucial resource in the fight…

A Desperate Escape – George Forrest on the run in China, July 1905

Some of us may be lucky, or in this case, unlucky enough to experience a life altering event that comes to define us whether we want it to…