A botanical garden or botanic garden is a garden with a documented collection of living plants for the purpose of scientific research, conservation, display, and education. Typically plants are labelled with their botanical names. It may contain specialist plant collections such as cacti and other succulent plants, herb gardens, plants from particular parts of the world, and so on; there may be greenhouses, shadehouses, again with special collections such as tropical plants, alpine plants, or other exotic plants. Most are at least partly open to the public, and may offer guided tours, educational displays, art exhibitions, book rooms, open-air theatrical and musical performances, and other entertainment.
The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) is a scientific centre for the study of plants, their diversity and conservation, as well as a popular tourist attraction. Founded in 1670 as a physic garden to grow medicinal plants, today it occupies four sites across Scotland—Edinburgh, Dawyck, Logan and Benmore—each with its own specialist collection. The RBGE's living collection consists of more than 13,302 plant species, whilst the herbarium contains in excess of 3 million preserved specimens.
Ulmus davidiana var. japonica, the Japanese elm, is one of the larger and more graceful Asiatic elms, endemic to much of continental northeast Asia and Japan, where it grows in swamp forest on young alluvial soils, although much of this habitat has now been lost to intensive rice cultivation.
Ulmus × hollandica 'Vegeta', sometimes known as the Huntingdon Elm, is an old English hybrid cultivar raised at Brampton, near Huntingdon, by nurserymen Wood & Ingram in 1746, allegedly from seed collected at nearby Hinchingbrooke Park. In Augustine Henry's day, in the later 19th century, the elms in Hinchingbrooke Park were U. nitens. Richens, noting that wych elm is rare in Huntingdonshire, normally flowering four to six weeks later than field elm, pointed out that unusually favourable circumstances would have had to coincide to produce such seed: "It is possible that, some time in the eighteenth century, the threefold requirements of synchronous flowering of the two species, a south-west wind", "and a mild spring permitting the ripening of the samaras, were met."
The elm cultivar Ulmus 'Crispa' [:'curled', the leaf margin], sometimes known as the Fernleaf Elm, arose before 1800 and was first listed by Willdenow as U. crispa (1809). Audibert listed an U. campestrisLinn. 'Crispa', orme à feuilles crépues [:'frizzy-leaved elm'], in 1817, and an Ulmus urticaefolia [:'nettle-leaved elm'] in 1832; the latter is usually taken to be a synonym. Loudon considered the tree a variety of U. montana (1838). In the 19th century, Ulmus × hollandica cultivars, as well as those of Wych Elm, were often grouped under Ulmus montana. Elwes and Henry (1913) listed 'Crispa' as a form of wych elm, but made no mention of the non-wych samara.
The elm cultivar Ulmus 'Berardii', Berard's Elm, was raised in 1865, as Ulmus Berardi, from seeds collected from large specimens of "common elm" growing on the ramparts at Metz, by an employee of the Simon-Louis nursery named Bérard. Carrière (1887), the Späth nursery of Berlin and the Van Houtte nursery of Gentbrugge regarded it as form of a Field Elm, listing it as U. campestris Berardii, the name used by Henry. Cheal's nursery of Crawley distributed it as Ulmus nitens [:Ulmus minor] 'Berardii'. Smith's of Worcester preferred the original, non-specific name, Ulmus 'Berardii'.
The Field Elm cultivar Ulmus minor 'Umbraculifera Gracilis' was obtained as a sport of 'Umbraculifera' by the Späth nursery of Berlin c.1897. It was marketed by the Späth nursery in the early 20th century, and by the Hesse Nursery of Weener, Germany, in the 1930s.
The elm cultivar Ulmus 'Scampstoniensis', the Scampston Elm or Scampston Weeping Elm, is said to have come from Scampston Hall, Yorkshire, England, before 1810. Loudon opined that a tree of the same name at the Royal Horticultural Society's Garden in 1834, 18 feet (5.5 m) high at 8 years old "differed little from the species". Henry described the tree, from a specimen growing in Victoria Park, Bath, as "a weeping form of U. nitens" [:Ulmus minor ]; however Green considered it "probably a form of Ulmus × hollandica". Writing in 1831, Loudon said that the tree was supposed to have originated in America. U. minor is not, however, an American species, so if the tree was brought from America, it must originally have been taken there from Europe. There was an 'American Plantation' at Scampston, which may be related to this supposition. A number of old specimens of 'Scampstoniensis' in this plantation were blown down in a great gale of October 1881; younger specimens were still present at Scampston in 1911.
Brian Laurence "Bill" Burtt FRSE FLS, was an English botanist and taxonomist who is noted for his contributions to the family Gesneriaceae. In a career that spanned 74 years, he worked first at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and then at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE). He made numerous field trips to South Africa and Sarawak and described a total of 637 new plant species. Burtt is denoted by the author abbreviation B.L.Burtt when citing a botanical name.
James Edgar Dandy was a British botanist, Keeper of Botany at the British Museum between 1956 and 1966. He was a world specialist on the plant genus Potamogeton and the family Magnoliaceae.
Stephen Blackmore CBE FRSE Royal Society of Biology FLS is a British botanist, who was educated at St. George's School, Hong Kong and the University of Reading where he completed his PhD in 1976 on the "Palynology and Systematics of the Cichorieae". He was elected a fellow of the Linnean Society of London in 1976. He then worked at the Royal Society of London’s Research Station on Aldabra Atoll in the Indian Ocean before being appointed Lecturer in Biology and Head of the National Herbarium and Botanic Garden at the University of Malawi. In 1980, he was appointed Head of Palynology at Natural History Museum in London and from 1990 to 1999 served there as Keeper of Botany. In 1985 he organized, together with Keith Ferguson, the Linnean Society symposium "Pollen and Spores: Form and Function" and in 1990, together with Susan Barnes, "Pollen and Spores: Patterns of Diversification". He was the 15th Regius Keeper of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh from 1999 until 20 December 2013, and was appointed His Majesty's Botanist in Scotland in 2010.
Ian Charleson Hedge was a Scottish botanist at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh. Hedge made important contributions to the flora of Iran and Iraq, and was a recognised authority on the flora of south-west Asia. He named more than 300 new plant species.
Roy Watling, PhD., DSc, FRSE, F.I.Biol., C.Biol., FLS is a Scottish mycologist who has made significant contributions to the study of fungi both in the identification of new species and correct taxonomic placement, as well as in fungal ecology.
The field elm cultivar Ulmus minor 'Viminalis' (:'willow-like'), occasionally referred to as the twiggy field elm, was raised by Masters in 1817, and listed in 1831 as U. campestris viminalis, without description. Loudon added a general description in 1838, and the Cambridge University Herbarium acquired a leaf specimen of the tree in 1866. Moss, writing in 1912, said that the Ulmus campestris viminalis from Cambridge University Herbarium was the only elm he thought agreed with the original Plot's elm as illustrated by Dr. Plot in 1677 from specimens growing in an avenue and coppice at Hanwell near Banbury. Elwes and Henry (1913) also considered Loudon's Ulmus campestris viminalis to be Dr Plot's elm. Its 19th-century name, U. campestris var. viminalis, led the cultivar to be classified for a time as a variety of English Elm. On the Continent, 'Viminalis' was the Ulmus antarcticaHort., 'zierliche Ulme' [:'dainty elm'] of Kirchner's Arboretum Muscaviense (1864).
The elm cultivar Ulmus 'Fastigiata Glabra' was distributed by the Späth nursery, Berlin, in the 1890s and early 1900s as U. montana fastigiata glabra. Späth used U. montana both for cultivars of wych elm and for those of some U. × hollandica hybrids like 'Dampieri'. A specimen of U. montana fastigiata glabra in the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh was determined by Melville in 1958 as a hybrid of the U. × hollandica group.
Douglas Mackay Henderson CBE FRSE FLS was a Scottish botanist, the 12th Regius Keeper of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh from 1970 to 1987.
William A. McNamara is an American horticulturist and expert in the field of plant conservation and the flora of Asia. Now retired, he was the President and Executive Director of Quarryhill Botanical Garden, a 25-acre wild woodland garden in Northern California's Sonoma Valley featuring wild-sourced plants from temperate East Asia. In 2017, he and Quarryhill Botanical Garden celebrated their 30th Anniversary. He retired from the Garden in October of 2019.
Rosemary Margaret Smith (1933–2004) was a Scottish botanist and illustrator who specialized in the taxonomy of the Zingiberaceae, or ginger family. Many of the species she classified and identified as being placed into improper genera were found in Asian countries, especially in the isolated island of Borneo.
PlantNetwork - the Plant Collections Network of Britain and Ireland is a non-profit charitable organization founded in 1996 that "aims to promote botanical collections in Britain and Ireland as a national resource for research, conservation and education and to facilitate networking and training among holders of plant collections". The current honorary president of the charity is Fellow David Rae, who was also involved in the creation of the journal Sibbaldia in 2003. The collections covered under the charity's support network include the National Trust for Scotland, the Forestry Commission, and the Royal Horticultural Society. PlantNetwork routinely holds conferences and workshops on both how to plant and handle trees and how to keep up material records on trees and their growth. The group also releases a newsletter covering similar information.
Rebecca Yahr is an American lichenologist who works at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh in Scotland. She was President of the British Lichen Society from 2019 until 2022.
