Category: Library and ArchivesPage 1 of 5

Information about the collections held in the RBGE Library and Archives

Daughters of tailors and slop shops: social snobbery and botanical art in early nineteenth-century Madras

I recently acquired two botanical watercolours by Janet Dick (1774–1857) painted in Madras in 1802 and 1803. Competent enough in execution, the main reason for buying them was…

Meet the Botanics Sniffer in Residence

What is the ‘mushroomy’ scent of heritage? And what do the institutions that care for it — such as the RBGE — smell like? By Siôn Parkinson Dr…

Exploring Greville’s Botanical Illustrations

The following blog was written by Connie Ma, a placement student in the Herbarium. As part of my MSc History of Art, Theory and Display programme at the…

The Indian botanical drawings reproduced in Ocean Flowers

In Spring 2004 a memorable exhibition curated by Carol Armstrong and Catherine de Zegher was shown at the Drawing Center in New York, and later that year at…

Flowers for William, Elizabeth and Margaret McNab

In May 1810 the McNab family took up residence in Botanics Cottage, then on its original site on Leith Walk. The family consisted of William, his wife Elizabeth,…

Students of 1809 and 1859

This Black History Month, we explore our links with Dr William Fergusson (1796 – 1846) and Surgeon-Major James ‘Africanus’ Beale Horton (1835 – 1883). 

Students’ Stories: “George Herbert Cave” by Dean Blake, 3rd Year Horticulture with Plantsmanship student at RBGE

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…

New Archives Acquisition: the MacWatt Primula Papers, with thanks to Elizabeth Farquharson (1915-2023), the remarkable daughter of a distinguished horticulturalist

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…

The South Indian cereal drawings of P. Mooroogasen Moodelliar

During my work on Hugh Cleghorn I became very interested in the Madras School of Art, the first of its type in India, established on 1 May 1850…

Two liliaceous drawings by Stella Ross-Craig

Stella Ross-Craig (1906–2006) is best known for her unsurpassed, uncoloured, pen and ink Drawings of British Plants (1948–1973). However, she was also an accomplished painter in watercolour. From…

The Wardie Cottages: the deaths of Edward Forbes and John Goodsir

Intrigued by the recent Botanics Story concerning letters from the anatomist John Goodsir to his Edinburgh University professorial botanical colleague John Hutton Balfour, and involving their mutual friend…

A tangled Calcutta-Caledonian web: James Kerr, John Fleming and John Hope’s engravings of asafoetida

One of the few benefits of getting older is that, assuming one still has one’s marbles and keeps one’s eyes open, new evidence can crop up and fall…

The Goodsir letters in RBGE archives’ John Hutton Balfour correspondence collection

by Michael T. Tracy Housed in the archives of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) is the collection of John Hutton Balfour papers which include numerous correspondences of…

When is a Nepalese pine not a Nepalese pine?

At the Natural History Museum I’ve recently catalogued a collection of 314 botanical watercolours made at the Saharunpur Botanic Garden in northern India between 1843 and 1866 for…

The Life and Achievements of Dr Archibald Hewan

In the spirit of Black History Month, we are sharing the story, otherwise untold, of Dr Archibald Hewan, a 19th century Black doctor and naturalist. Born in Jamaica…

Ian Hedge

18 August 1928 – 7 August 2022 Ian Charleson Hedge, who passed away peacefully last month at the age of 93, was an exceptional botanist and long-time lynchpin…

After the flood; an update from the RBGE Archives one year on.

On the 4th of July 2021, water ingress from a burst drainpipe above the reception of our Science building on Inverleith Row made its way into the RBGE…

Harry’s Gates

Every day, hundreds of visitors pour into the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, many of them through our East Gate. To do this, one must pass through two sets…

The David Douglas Telescope – what can one object tell us?

The RBGE Archives do not just hold papers – correspondence, administration and photographs – we also have a number of objects; plant models, gardening tools and camera equipment…

Naming of Primula species from the 1921 British Reconnaissance Expedition to Mount Everest

In Wade Davis’ account of the ‘Mallory’ expeditions to Mount Everest1, there is a brief but intriguing reference to the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. In a section describing…