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The apple is a symbol of fertility in Norse and Germanic pagan tradition. So, there is some irony in the fact that work by the Scottish Plant Recovery…
I recently joined the research staff of the RBGE as a fern taxonomist focusing on the diversity of tropical southeast Asia. RBGE is perfect for me. Its herbarium…
I imagine that releasing a red kite or a golden eagle as part of a species reintroduction programme is a pretty emotional moment. That animal, raised in captivity,…
Plant blindness – the inability to see or notice the plants in one’s own environment. Elisabeth schussler & James wandersee, 1998 Surprisingly, for me at least, some people…
It’s the season of mellow fruitfulness and the Scottish Plant Recovery project team has been busy squashing the bright orange/red berries of the Arran whitebeams (Hedlundia species) to…
This Black History Month, we explore our links with Dr William Fergusson (1796 – 1846) and Surgeon-Major James ‘Africanus’ Beale Horton (1835 – 1883).
The UN predicts that two out of three people will live in cities by 2050. But will these cities be good places to live? And can they ‘do good’ to our living planet? Our research project – The Good City – aims to find out…
Recovery of threatened plant populations requires attention to a lot of small details and sometimes this includes working with things that are literally small. Flowers can be small….
You can read more about the journey of the tree ferns in the BBC article below. BBC News – Giant plants make epic journey from Edinburgh to Port…
Taxonomists – those who classify and name species – are sometimes grumbled about by gardeners because familiar plant names are changed, apparently out of the blue and for…
George Herbert Cave of Windsor, southeast England (1872-1965), was a botanist and plant collector who rapidly rose to prominence in the Victorian era. He collected plants in Sikkim…
Read Marc Gilbert’s full article on air layer propagation here. Discover more from our other articles and journals here.
A version of this article was first published in the British Lichen Society 2023 Bulletin no 123, pp 29-33 In March 2022, material from the British Lichen Society…
The marsh saxifrage (Saxifraga hirculus) is a golden jewel of our bogs and marshlands. Each small plant bears one or two flowers, bright golden yellow and often dotted…
In 2022, the Horticulture team fixed their attention on the Ferns and Fossils Glasshouse, home to an impressive species diversity from an ancient group of plants. Read about the successes and challenges of moving this collection, from one of the team who carried out the work.
This is an exciting time for threatened plant recovery as new opportunities are emerging through ambitious large-scale nature recovery projects Aline Finger, Scottish plant recovery project lead Early…
Caught in the process of unfurling its first pair of leaves, this newly germinated wych elm seedling looks delicate. But it is in the vanguard of a new…
Written by Rebecca Camfield, one of the members of our digitisation team. During digitisation you come across many interesting treasures and stories. This is just one of them….
Seeing the next generation doing well gives us hope for the future, and this goes for plants as much as people. This is particularly true when the plants…
A post by RBGE Research Associate Dr. Helen Bennett In April 2023 we were visited at RBGE by Elizabeth Farquharson with her daughter Katharine Trotter, to gift her…