Brian Lawrence ‘Bill’ Burtt (1913-2008) began his career as a taxonomist at Kew Gardens, before coming to the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) in 1951. Throughout the course…
The Pumpkin patch in the demonstration garden has come to fruition. The large flat seeds were sown into containers in May. Through the season the trailing growth produced…
During an expedition to Borneo in 2003, we discovered two intriguing new species of the monotypic family, Lowiaceae, in the state of Sarawak, Malaysia. The large-flowered Orchidantha megalantha…
It is eight weeks since the expedition returned from Saipal Himal, and it already feels a very long way away. Our trip coincided with South Asia’s wettest monsoon…
The dust has finally settled from the Project Soothe Exhibition and we have had a chance to catch our breath and take stock. The exhibition was a resounding success…
Ben Rivers, Urth, 2016. Courtesy of the artist and Kate MacGarry, London False Habitats and the Twisted Threads of Fate[1] Buildings almost always outlive their makers; and…
Help us unlock our collections data for use by researchers across the globe! As part of this year’s WeDigBio event, 19-22 October, we are launching a project to…
His Excellency Dr Durga Bahadur Subedi, Nepalese Ambassador to the United Kingdom, led a delegation from the Embassy in London to Scotland this weekend, visiting Edinburgh, Aberdeen and…
Now two full years have passed since our Nature Play: Nature Conservation project to explore the idea of informal, child-led play within an area of native vegetation in…
The Nerine bowdenii and Nerine sarniensis are lasting well. An unusual cultivar N. ‘Quest ‘(a named hybrid of sarniensis) is growing in a clay pot in the glasshouses…
A couple of years ago GBIF started including images for occurrence records in their biodiversity portal. Last week I was able to add images from our digital repository…
A young plant of Nyssa sylvatica planted on the pond lawn is colouring well. A native to Eastern North America where it adds considerably to the swathes of…
As part doing a stocktake of the tropical and temperate orchids in the Living Collection I was impressed to see accession numbers that indicated we had plants well…
September 2017 continued this summer’s patchy weather, with an unsettled first half. The third week was much calmer and warmer, almost a mini Indian summer, with the temperature…
After RBGE’s initial involvement in land plant DNA barcode marker selection, culminating in a couple of 2009 papers that both utilized bryophyte barcoding data sets, we started a…
On Thursday the 28th September, we welcomed Professors Takayuki Kohchi and Ryuichi Nishihama, from Kyoto University, Japan, to the Botanics. Professor Kohchi’s lab is renowned for their evolutionary…
Two plants fusing the shade of pink are the stunning, long lasting flowers of Nerine bowdenii and the fruit of Holboellia grandiflora. The Nerine, a South African bulb;…