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 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…
To understand giant panda diet you need to understand bamboos and there are many types of bamboos in their habitat. Giant pandas seems to know which is best…
Our short damp November days offer the perfect opportunity for leafing through reels of photographs from earlier in the year; many of mine are from a short trip…
In previous Botanics Stories I have written about the joys of Herbarium Angling, but fusty old botanists do occasionally emerge into the glare of daylight and take a…
In the Herbarium at RBGE, we store a huge number of sheets of archival quality paper with squashed and dried plant specimens stuck to them. These have been…
During August of 1907, in western part of Hubei province in China, Ernest Henry Wilson collected a Hydrangea that turned out to be new to science. The plant…
Tucked away on a boundary wall near the glasshouses, but not on public display, is one of the oldest living Clematis specimens in our collection. This plant was…
From 14th – 22nd November 35 staff from 20 of China’s Botanical Gardens have been attending a horticulture training course at Kunming Botanic Garden. This course has been…
When working through endless spreadsheets of data occasionally something jumps out because it looks odd. Scanning down the list of living Clematis at RBGE the accession number 19021013 set…