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Lichens – Making the Invisible Visible – An Air Pollution Survey

The idea formed quite early on in my TCV Natural Talent Traineeship based at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh  to develop a specific tool kit to help people…

A most distinctive colour

Warmth in the air and a lack of frost will give a good flowering season amongst the Rhododendron collection. One worth searching the copse for is Rhododendron davidii….

March 2016 Garden Wildlife Report

March 2016, like February, began on a rather windy note as Storm Jake passed through although the Garden was relatively unaffected. The month’s other major storm, Katie over…

Fern Conservation – Celebrating our Science and Horticulture throughout March for International Women’s Day

Protection of the habitat is a perhaps the most effective method of conservation of plant diversity, yet this alone cannot guarantee the survival of some of our most…

Alpine extravaganza

Primula allionii seen in pots in the traditional alpine house and colonising the tufa wall in the modern structure too. Also worth a mention is Saxifraga dinnikii alba….

Botanics Sparrowhawks – Easter Trail Bird Biodiversity

Happy Easter everyone! Just to let you know it’s still pretty quiet with the sparrowhawks although I have seen some dotting about so hopefully nesting will be underway…

Moth trapping at the Garden: Two new records

Monitoring the wildlife in the Garden is an ongoing task that helps us understand the value of gardens, and other amenity greenspaces, for all sorts of different animals….

Collections Care – Condition Survey

Introduction A rolling condition survey of mounted herbarium specimens was recommended in the 2010 RBGE Synthesys Self-Assessment Collections Care Report. An initial pilot survey was carried out in…

Keep your eye on the alpine display

Amongst the array of fine spring flowering bulbs in the alpine house is a pot of Erythronium grandiflorum ssp. grandiflorum. A native of western North America found growing…

Discovering the Sapotaceae family

If anyone had asked me if I knew any plants belonging to the Sapotaceae family eight weeks ago, I would have had no suggestions – I probably wouldn’t…

British Art Show 8: Bedwyr Williams

British Art Show 8 has now been open for a whole month at Inverleith House, along with our partner venues Talbot Rice Gallery, University of Edinburgh and the…

The dodo tree and other stories

The Sapotaceae plant family provides us with some wonderful examples of the sometimes intricate interactions plants have with animals. One of the more intriguing cases is that of…

There’s more to Marchantia than there used to be! An introduction to the new additions

One of the most recognisable groups in the bryophytes, the complex thalloid liverwort genus Marchantia, has just become a bit larger. We have sunk Preissia and Bucegia into…

Another Sprig of Hope For Ash Tree? BIOCHAR …

Archaeological studies have shown that, ‘Biochar’, or at least a similar product, was used by ancient Amazonians to add to the soil to help with their food growing….

Anne Sarah Jervis (1801–1886): a new swagger print by an unrecorded artist working in India

In the past I have written about botanical ‘swagger prints’ – large-format illustrations commissioned at least in part to boost the ego of the commissioner. At RBGE (from…

Gesneriaceae Research in Indonesia – Celebrating our science and horticulture throughout March for International Women’ s Day

In order ‘to explore, conserve and explain the world of plants’ we need to build up our collections, both of living plants and herbarium specimens, especially from under-collected…

Birds need bits

Think remnants as you get out into the garden to tidy up now the days are longer. Birds are looking about for pieces of vegetation to use as…

A newly discovered J.D. Hooker letter about Draba aizoides

The most glowing review of Cleghorn’s (frankly rather dull – his father uncharitably told him that it would ‘drive all other soporifics out of fashion’) 1861 Forests &…

British Art Show 8: Pablo Bronstein

Here at Inverleith House we are very much enjoying Pablo Bronstein’s botanically-inspired artwork, The Birth of the Skyscraper from Botanical Architecture, 2015 (detail), and Early Industrial Landscape, 2016…

Showy gem on the alpine wall

Arabis purpurea is a mat forming evergreen of loose habit. Interestingly the seed was collected from a plant growing on a dark shady dry bank in Cyprus. Here,…