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Yesterday (18 January 2017), just at the end of my daily lunchtime wildlife recording walk round the Garden, I checked the bark of a particular birch tree (Betula…
December 2016 swung between cold and mild, with some hard frosts near the beginning and an exceptionally mild Christmas Day. It was again fairly dry for the most…
The season of gales and heavy rain can conspire to unseat climbing plants from their supports. Take a pair of secateurs and reduce the overhang growth which can…
This year RBGE staff and volunteers have collected seeds from 14 trees and 29 conservation priority herbs, to help deliver Scottish species into the UK National Tree Seed…
We instinctively know that a walk in the garden or somewhere else filled with natural beauty is good for us but it is difficult to justify expensive or…
The long arching seed pods of Glaucium flavum are splitting lengthways into longitudinal sections. The seeds long gone, now just sections of the pithy packaging remain within. Found…
During the short days it is good to have flowering plants in the garden; Lonicera myrtillus is a low growing deciduous shrub. The fresh yellow tubular flowers hang…
January 2016 dawned with a frost, only – 0.4°c, but still a frost. This, following the wettest month for more than a century. December 2015 was also the…
Tackling the tree health problems caused by an ever expanding number of new pests and diseases is not just a matter of being vigilant and responding to outbreaks….
Images from Nacadia, a therapy garden at Horsholm Arboretum, Denmark Gardening is good for you, and it is now official. The use gardening in the treatment of…
Last month I was out on my usual lunchtime wildlife recording walk around RBGE and noticed some small insects on the bark of various species of birch. They…
One day in August this year I took several photographs of a rather striking fly that was resting on one of the leaves of the dwarf elm (Ulmus…
As a base layer, the colour brown dominates at this time of year. Ideal as a foundation layer to the glitz of Christmas. Stephanandra tanakae has fine warmth…
Frankincense and myrrh have an almost mystical place in our psyche at this time of year and both can be best be descibed, if unflatteringly, as non-timber forest…
Sitting in an exposed site within the rock garden are plants of Alyssoides utriculata. This short lived woody perennial has seed capsules that resemble bladders. It is found…
The Library at the Botanics has recently acquired a new member of staff – or should that be an old member of staff? Certainly an old member of…
November 2016 started very mild, as October had ended, but by the 10th it had turned much colder. The second part of the month was cold and there…
Two Euonymus sieboldianus are planted side by side in the Garden arising from two different collecting expeditions. They are deciduous branched shrubs covered in fruit; each plant having…
Many new species are already included in natural history collections around the world, it’s just that nobody has yet got around to examining the material, recognising that it represents something…
Now that the foliage is clearing from the deciduous canopies the full beauty of the trunk of Acer pensylvanicum is revealed. This seedling is now eight years old;…