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Local network, social media and a new generic ginger record for Nepal

The torch ginger genus, Etlingera, is distributed from India in the western through SE Asia to Australia and Fiji in the east. Botanical collections made in the 19th…

WeDigBio at the Botanics

There’s a first time for everything and last week the RBGE herbarium digitisation team hosted its first WeDigBio onsite transcription event! Worldwide Engagement for Digitising Biocollections, WeDigBio, is…

The best transient yellow of the season

Magnificent in full autumn colour Lindera obtusiloba has turned evenly butter rich yellow. The exception being the red leaf petioles which are seen when looking closer at this…

A shaft of sunlight

On the lawn west of the pond is a young specimen of Fraxinus apertisquamifera, a native to Japan. A deciduous tree to 5 metres height and a wide…

Incredible Autumn

You may have noticed a slight chill to the air and a softer, golden quality to the morning light, which can only mean one thing: autumn is here….

Apple Day 10th anniversary

The Apple Day event held in the Botanic Cottage on 6 October was the tenth Apple Day run jointly by the Botanics and the Royal Caledonian Horticultural Society….

In memory of Corporal Henry McBeath (1878-1918)

Henry McBeath was from Rogart in Sutherland, born in November 1878 to James McBeath, a farm grieve (foreman) and his wife Johan from Rovie, a farm in Rogart…

Polytrichum baits: cutting cleaned mosses

Following on from the rather unpredictable results we obtained from fragmenting duplicate aliquots of CTAB-extracted Polytrichum DNA in the Bioruptor, Isuru cleaned aliquots of IK31 and IK53 using…

Hybrid capture from degraded DNA: the mysterious case of the vanishing libraries

When we’re working out a protocol or troubleshooting, we spend a lot of time quantifying small quantities of fluids, looking at DNA concentrations on the DeNovix, running tapes…

Polytrichum baits: Cutting mosses

We started our lab work on the Polytrichum hybrid baits project on the 1st of October, by normalising some CTAB-extracted DNA with 0.1X TE to 55 µL of…

Generating a phylogeny of Polytrichum using hybrid baits

The current Next Gen Sequencing lab project at the Botanics involves looking at the phylogeny of Polytrichum section Polytrichum, using hybrid capture. Polytrichum commune, photographed by David Bell…

Hybrid capture from degraded DNA: bead-cleaning away the adaptor peaks

After testing bead-to-sample ratios of 30:50, 35:50, 40:50, 50:50 and 60:50 on a Thermo Scientific™ GeneRuler™ 50 bp DNA Ladder, using Beckman Coulter AMPure XP beads, we focused…

Hybrid capture from degraded DNA: testing bead cleaning on a 50bp ladder

When we made our Begonia libraries, working with (in some cases) relatively small quantities of very degraded DNA, we should have diluted the adaptors. We didn’t. Consequently, we…

Cast to mud

This is the season where worm casts appear on the surface of the lawn. If left and walked or worse, mown over, the squashing, flattening action will result…

Buchan Hepburn and McDouall East Africa and Angola Album 1904 – 1909

By Helen Bennett, Library & Archives Volunteer New light has been shed on the creation of Logan Garden by a previously unknown album of photographs and watercolours recently…

Interleaving in the RBGE Collections, Part 1: The Flora of Forfarshire

By Hannah Swan Before publisher’s bindings were de rigueur, texts came in flimsy paper ‘wrappers’, leaving the permanent binding to the new owner. Because of this, many books from…

Seed heads

The seed pods of Clematis terniflora have split open and are releasing their seed. The plumose styles appear as a mass of white feathers covering the tangled growth….

Hybrid capture from degraded DNA: quality metrics for duplicate extractions

For one of the taxa in our study set, Begonia scottii (living collection no. 20170076), we made a few replicate DNA extractions using Qiagen DNeasy plant mini-kits, and…

Meet the Valerian Family

“It’ll stink!  Tell me if you can’t stand it.  My cat adores it.”  Sweaty armpits, musty old rooms, smelly feet were all attempts at describing the smell of…

Natural Selection Exhibition at Inverleith House

Inverleith house has produced many wonderful exhibitions. The Lost Words exhibition being a great success with the many visitors that attended. The newest addition to Inverleith house is…