Talk

The Grampian & Tayside Group of Plant Heritage

Saturday 30^th March 2pm

The Education Centre, Dundee Botanic Garden

Riverside Drive, Dundee DD2 1QH 

A Tour of Scotland's Rich Heritage of 'Useful Plants'

 By Greg Kenicer

Head of Education, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh

Tickets on the door or by advance booking. £4

To make a booking or for more details, contact Sue Hewer on 01575 560259 or suehewer1@btopenworld.com

Come along and join RBGE’s Gregory Kenicer for a whirlwind tour through Scotland’s ‘useful plant heritage’ as seen through the eyes of everyone from the first hunter-gatherers to the gentlemen botanists of the Enlightenment. Scotland’s useful wild plants are superbly versatile, and we’re very lucky to have excellent accounts of their traditional uses. The spread from pragmatic everyday food and materials, to mainstays of local economies, to weird and wonderful magical cures adds a fascinating dimension to the plants beyond our gardens.

If you've heard Greg speak before, you'll know that this is going to be a really good one!

Plant of the month - March

Viburnum x bodnantense ‘Charles Lamont’

Family: Adoxaceae           Origin: Garden              Accession: 1974

find it at the end of the rose garden 

Viburnum x bodnantense is the result of a cross between V. farreri  and V. grandiflorum. The cross was originally made by Charles Lamont, Assistant Curator at the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh in 1933, but was not widely propagated until 1935 when the same cross was made at Bodnant, hence the name of the hybrid. ‘Dawn’ was the first named form, and ‘Charles Lamont’ was subsequently named as one of the original seedlings raised at Edinburgh.

A medium to large deciduous shrub, it has a strong upright habit when young, later arching outwards gracefully. Ample clusters of exquisitely fragrant, rose-tinted flowers are produced in winter, before the leaves appear in spring. The foliage also turns an attractive bronze in autumn.

Originally thought to belong to the family Caprifoliaceae, recent studies using DNA sequencing have shown Viburnum to be a member of the family Adoxaceae.

Email address

Up to now we have not been able to make use of email to inform those Friends' happy to be contacted in this way about forthcoming events and matters of general concern to the Garden. Hopefully this is about to change - details will be published in the next Newsletter due out around Easter.