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Use of Wardian cases at the Botanics
The Wardian case is credited as the invention of the surgeon and naturalist Nathanial Bagshaw Ward who lived in London and was an avid plant collector. His glazed, closed cases revolutionised the...
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Partners giving elm and apple a better future
March and April saw the completion of a marathon planting exercise by the Scottish Plant Recovery team to give a helping hand to two threatened native tree species – wych elm (Ulmus glabra) and wild...
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Elm blossom
If you have ever appreciated elms blooming then you are more observant than most. I don’t mean the splashes of bright green we see in April before most deciduous trees come into leaf. That is the...
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People making a difference
March and April saw the completion of a marathon planting exercise by the Scottish Plant Recovery team to give a helping hand to two threatened native tree species – wych elm (Ulmus glabra) and crab...
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Wilding Garden trials – small cow-wheat
The Garden is now being used as a test bed to explore some of the challenges and unanswered questions involved in returning threatened Scottish plants to wild sites. The focus of this activity is in...
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Weeding moss
Weeding moss might sound like the endless battle that some people engage in to maintain their lawns and block paving in immaculate condition. Today I stumbled across a literal example of weeding moss...
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A second chance
Trees in general, and wych elms (Ulmus glabra) in particular, are being given a second chance in the dramatic landscape of Assynt. Land owned by both the community and environmental charities now...
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A homecoming in the Borders
My visit to assess the potential for wych elm (Ulmus glabra) planting on land owned by the Borders Forest Trust will pave the way for a homecoming of sorts for the elms in the next month or so. The 12...
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Restoring nature at Balmoral
As its winding course runs past Balmoral Castle the River Dee is flanked by a mix of farmland and woodland. Much of the woodland is composed of majestic old Scots pines (Pinus sylvestris) growing...
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Restoring salmon elms in Caithness
‘It’s not necessarily about fishing, just knowing the salmon are there is what matters’, explains Anson Macauslan, estate manager at Braemore & Langwell Estate, as he drives me upstream along the...
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Elm in it’s place
A story that is told in pictures alone is somehow very satisfying. Nobody needs to be a wordsmith to get the message across. When Chris Puddephatt sent me his latest images of Assynt’s elms I saw a...
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Translocating resilience
Assisting the migration of plants is something that has already been carried out in a limited way to help them respond to climate change. The concern is that some plants are either unable to migrate...
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Scottish Plant Recovery updates
Monthly updates on the progress being made to restore the fortunes of some Scotland’s most threatened plants are now available online. The updates, produced by the Garden’s Scottish Plant Recovery...
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No more sow-thistle blues
During summer 2024 a small group of staff from the Garden’s Scottish Plant Recovery team, NatureScot and National Trust for Scotland achieved something which would have been unimaginable ten years...
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Interpreting fungi in the Garden
The Garden’s Visitor Welcome Team is busy deploying a new set of interpretation panels to highlight the seasonal interest that fungi bring to the Garden. The normally overlooked fungi tend to undergo...
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Uber ants
As part of our work on Scottish Plant Recovery we have been bulking up the seed of small cow-wheat (Melampyrum sylvaticum) in readiness for translocation back to the wild. The aim of this work is to...
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Norwegian niches: oblong woodsia
Niche is a word that has multiple meanings. Someone might have ‘found their niche’ if they have a particularly suitable job, for example. In ecology the word is a jargon term for all the environmental...
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Cow-wheat curiosity: pollination
There’s nothing quite like a mystery for building a sense of curiosity. As part of my preparation for the Scottish Plant Recovery project fieldtrip to Norway in early August I was intrigued by the...
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Cow-wheat conundrum
One of the plants in the set of ten that make up the Scottish Plant Recovery project – small cow-wheat (Melampyrum sylvaticum) – is a particular enigma due to its poorly understood interactions with...
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In the firing line
Plants taking pot shots at passers by is obviously a fanciful idea. Nevertheless, there is a plant, known as the purple toothwort (Lathraea clandestina), that could be described as a botanical...
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