Tag: Darwin Tree of Life

Wake-up call to climate change

The reality of climate change is that we will lose almost all our large wych elm trees after a long history in the British Isles spanning some 9,000…

A small plant with a big genome

The small adder’s-tongue fern has a single leaf not much bigger than your little fingernail. Apart from this easily overlooked leaf, the only other visible part of the…

From a single tree to a BioBlitz

On the 17 and 18 June 2022 naturalists and the public came together at Little Sparta, a garden in the Pentland Hills 25 miles southwest of Edinburgh, to…

Biodiversity at Little Sparta

The artist Ian Hamilton Finlay created a garden in the hills near Biggar that he called Little Sparta in response to the characterization of Edinburgh as the Athens…

Giants, genomes and true grit

We assign human qualities to animals without a second thought. The wise owl and the cunning fox will produce a smile, even though we know this is just…

Blazing the apple trail

The Garden’s 2021 Harvest Festival includes a short self-guided trail on the origins and future of the apple linked to work on the Darwin Tree of Life project….