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Fraxi Queen of the Forest

It may seem an unlikely task but Asylon Theatre have created a beautiful and intensely moving piece of theatre inspired by the devastating ash-dieback disease that is spreading…

Capturing Genes from Herbaria. VII. Comparisons.

As previously mentioned, we tested two different kits in our NBAF project. The first is the Illumina Tru-Seq Nano library preparation kit (FC-121-4001), which recommends a starting DNA…

Amorphophallus titanum – Preserving it for posterity

The flowering of our Amorphophallus titanum (titan arum) was a tremendous event with c 19,000 people visiting the Glasshouses to see the plant growing from a small bud…

Tubular bells

Desfontainia spinosa a native to Chile, Ecuador, Peru. The parent plant of this specimen was growing in the Alerce Andino National Park, Chile at a relatively low altitude…

Capturing Genes from Herbaria. VI. Size selection

A few days ago, I read a tweet from the Botany2015 meeting in Alberta that described DNA extracted from herbarium specimens as “pre-sheared”. This resonates with our own…

July 2015 Garden Wildlife Report

July did indeed start with a heat wave as hinted in June’s report, but once that ended it was all downhill with much of the month being wet…

Fringe Sustainable Practice

I’m delighted that yet again Fringe shows here at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh  have been shortlisted for the Fringe Sustainable Practice Award. Last year’s winners were the…

British Algae online

Here at the RBGE we have just finished digitising our collection of British Rhodophyta (Red Algae), a total of 7850 specimens. Our collection dates from present day right…

The great escape

The spectacular flowers of Romneya coulteri are to be seen in the Queen Mother Memorial Garden on the north boundary border. The large white pleated petals surround the…

Botanics Sparrowhawks – What’s that noise?

Welcome back to the Botanics Sparrowhawk blog. No photos this time I’m sorry to say. My camera is just not up to the job although I got quite…

Capturing Genes from Herbaria. V. Fragmenting the DNA

The mantra for many years for next generation sequencing has been, like “garbage in, garbage out”, that the optimal starting point is high quality, high molecular weight DNA….

Capturing Genes from Herbaria. IV. DNA

In March this year, having already chosen and obtained the plant material that we were going to use for our NBAF project on using a hybrid bait protocol…

What to do in your Fruit and Vegetable Garden in Scotland: AUGUST

Here is a list of jobs to do in the garden this month: Weed regularly to prevent weeds setting seed for next year. Water copiously if we have…

Capturing Genes from Herbaria. III. The Samples.

Having chosen Inga umbellifera as the study organism for our NBAF-funded project to test the use of hybrid baits for recovery of DNA sequences from herbarium material, we…

A hive of activity

In recent weeks we’ve seen fantastic progress being made on rebuilding the Botanic Cottage. The final slates are going onto the roof this week, and the pan-tiles are…

Capturing Genes from Herbaria. II. Inga.

About 300 species of Inga (Leguminosae: Mimosoideae: Ingeae) grow in lowland and montane rain forest throughout the humid tropical zone, from Mexico to Uruguay. Most species diversity is…

Capturing Genes from Herbaria. I. What it’s all about.

In February this year, Dr Catherine Kidner, Dr Michelle Hart, Dr James Nicholls and I were awarded an NBAF pilot grant by NERC to explore the use of…

A shrubby rosaceous success

Stephanandra tanakae a deciduous shrub with long arching growth. Native to Honshu Japan where it was seen growing on steep NE facing rocky cliffs at 920m. Here only…

CakeFest

On 21 June crowds flocked to the Garden to take a look at quite a spectacle being contstructed. Over 50 baking teams had been planning, baking and icing…

Digitising microscope slides – barcode placement

As part of the digitisation of the collections held at RBGE we are starting to barcode our microscope slide collections. As part of this we have been investigating…