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October continued the long quiet dry spell in the first half of the month with unseasonally warm days. The second half of the month was a little more…
The relative structural simplicity of some groups of mosses can disguise their uniqueness, especially when simplified features have evolved multiple times within the same family from ancestors with…
Although the exact relationships between the earliest land plant lineages are not yet well resolved, there is consensus that liverworts are one of the most ancient land plant…
September was another largely dry, bright sunny month, with significant rainfall on only three days. Five more species were added to the Garden’s list, bringing it up to…
One of the earliest plastid genomes to be sequenced, in the late 1980s (Ohyama et al.), was that of Marchantia polymorpha, one of the commonest liverworts around town,…
Rather a while ago, back in 2003, we started working on a phylogeny of the complex thalloid liverworts at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (as a Molecular Phylogenetics…
Image: Duncan Marquiss, Search Film, 2015 (Film Still). Courtesy of the artists. Despite being a quiet spell for observing Sparrowhawk activity in the garden, it is still possible…
We have just had a facinating week visiting communities and wild places across Scotland with three Sami guests from the Far North of Sweden. Greta and Linn Huuva,…
The Fortingall Yew in Perthshire is a tree of international renown as potentially the oldest individual tree in Europe. It has been suggested that it could be as…
Inverleith House presents two artist films that consider the natural world and scientific enquiry as part of a new short season of screenings reflecting upon the gallery’s unique…
To tie in with the launch of ‘Plants from the Woods and Forests of Chile’, we wanted to look at some of the material from our herbarium and…
I have had some good encounters with Sparrowhawks over the last few weeks. I posted about one fairly recently and in the last couple of days I also…
Back in March I wrote a blog ‘wild food Sami style’ about a new book and film about Sami chef and food ambassador Greta Huuva. Now Greta, her…
Back in 2014, staff in the molecular lab and herbarium at RBGE greatly enjoyed a three-week visit from Austrian Dr Wolfgang Hofbauer. With funding from the EU SYNTHESYS…
The specimen of Sorbus microphylla agg fruiting profusely in the copse was collected in the Langtang National Park area of Nepal. This is the area devastated by the…
With deciduous leaves colouring and dormancy on its way, now is the time to consider tree planting. Take due account of the weather. Depending on the size of…
Planted at the entrance to the John Hope Gateway is Rosa hirtula. A native to Japan where it is found growing in association with, amongst others, Larix kaempferi,…
On 17 September 2015 I photographed a leafhopper on alder (Alnus glutinosa) next to the small pond near the Botanic Cottage site. The leafhopper had a very distinctive…
Although now well past the breeding season if you are lucky you may be treated to a close encounter with one of the sparrowhawks in the garden. They…
Colour this autumn has been unrivalled. The warmth from the sun and the dry season have combined to extend the floral season. Take a last walk through the…