Category: Other NewsPage 33 of 52

Stories not categories under anything else

Sami ethnobotany – Pine and Birch

We have just had a facinating week visiting communities and wild places across Scotland with three Sami guests from the Far North of Sweden. Greta and Linn Huuva,…

Autumn Screenings at Inverleith House: Anne-Marie Copestake and Duncan Marquiss

Inverleith House presents two artist films that consider the natural world and scientific enquiry as part of a new short season of screenings reflecting upon the gallery’s unique…

Sami wild food experts visit Scotland

Back in March I wrote a blog ‘wild food Sami style’ about a new book and film about Sami chef and food ambassador Greta Huuva. Now Greta, her…

Hidden diversity in unexpected places – moss growth on modern building surfaces

Back in 2014, staff in the molecular lab and herbarium at RBGE greatly enjoyed a three-week visit from Austrian Dr Wolfgang Hofbauer. With funding from the EU SYNTHESYS…

New leafhopper species for Scotland found at RBGE

On 17 September 2015 I photographed a leafhopper on alder (Alnus glutinosa) next to the small pond near the Botanic Cottage site. The leafhopper had a very distinctive…

Plants from Nepal – a new area at Edinburgh to show them off

There have been Nepalese species growing at RBGE for as long as anyone can remember and at the moment there are 529 accessions of plants which either come…

Carex on Herbaria@Home

RBGE has recently started to explore the use of Citizen Science platforms by providing images and data to Herbaria@Home, a long standing and successful platform for transcribing herbarium…

Boundary best

With the sun shining on the canopy of Acer saccharum we are reminded that the autumn equinox passed and the day length is now shorter than the hours…

First Audio Leaflet: Dawyck Scottish Trees Trail

Apps Apps Apps For several years now we have been looking for a way to make appropriate use of mobile phones to deliver interpretation material. Smart phones really…

Battle of Loos, 25th September 1915

In memory of Lance Corporal William F. Bennett (1889-1915), Private Alan Menzies (1894-1915), Lance Corporal John Stewart (1891-1915) and Private George H. Stuart (1891-1915) In August 1914, RBGE…

Capturing Genes from Herbaria. IX. Hybrid capture

By mid-May 2015, we had 32 separate Inga umbellifera libraries, 15 generated using the Illumina Tru-Seq Nano library preparation kits, and 17 with the NEBNext Ultra library preparation…

Finding Monocarpus, in the field

Sadly, although not surprisingly, I was not able to amplify the regions of Monocarpus DNA needed to compare it to other complex thalloid liverworts from a 1950s collection that we had…

Botanics bees beat the blues

During the summer of 2015 the Botanics had a major focus on bees with the Urban bees exhibition in the John Hope Gateway and various pollinator-friendly initiatives in…

Really Wild Veg – celery trials 2015

The wet summer may not have been much fun, but our celery has been loving it. One of the real challenges with growing celery on well-drained soils is…

Where the Tropics meet the Arctic – Scotland

Some of the most remote and beautiful wilderness landscapes in Scotland are in the extreme north-west, in Sutherland, so-called from the Vikings who regarded it as the south…

John Hutton Balfour Excursions

“Excursions may be truly said to be the life of the botanist. They enable him to study the science practically, by the examination of plants in their living state, and…

Biography of John Hutton Balfour

John Hutton Balfour Born: 15 September 1808 Place of Birth: Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh Died: 11 February 1884 Place of Death: Inverleith House, Edinburgh Occupation: Botanist and Teacher The…

Finding Monocarpus, in the herbarium

At the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh we’ve been working on the phylogeny of the complex thalloid liverworts for rather a while now. David Long presented a poster on…

Another Green World – Linn botanic Garden

Nestled between folds in the low hills facing Loch Long the Linn Botanic Garden is one of Scotland’s lesser known botanical treasures – a remarkable collection of plants…