I’m continuing my botanical Odyssey, which is inspiring my spirit of systematics. I’ve found myself in Edinburgh, Scotland, for some reason – I’ve been to Inverleith a couple of times, and this time I wanted to have a look at one of the other 3 Royal Botanic Garden sites. About 30 miles south of Edinburgh near Peebles, is the Dawyck gardens. This is more of an arborium, lots of trees (I like trees), which was formally the grounds of the estate of the Darwyck mansion set in the remote lowland hills of Tweedale.
In contrast to my visit to Kew, its raining up here, north of the border. A far cry from London, where a jet groans through the air every 45 seconds on its descent into Heathrow. The air is so clean that lichen decorates nearly every tree branch. The grouse are foraging on a gently sloping lawn in the cool light Scottish drizzle. I’ve just taken a personalised guided tour of the grounds; personalised as the weather seems to have put everyone else off. Carol and Gavin were particularly knowledgeable, not just about the living collection, but also about the history of its collectors. If you ever visit, then it is worth taking the tour.
I’ve put up a picture of a tree planted in 1750, legend has it that Linnaeus planted it, but its been admitted that it was more likely one of Linnaeus’ students, Sir James Naesmyth.
I’ve contemplated about the mind of the taxonomist in previous posts and it seems that there is some element of the mad victorian explorer being funded by eccentric super rich collectectors to impress their friends. Apparently the first to get hold of a new species was a status thing of imperial times. I guess I’m going to get more into that kind of history, and create a taxonomy of taxonomists. One of the guys though, was David Douglas who plundered north America for specimens, including the Douglas Fir. My thinking is about how this spirit of adventure can be applied to cataloguing specimens of clia, and building the meme-bank; I suppose some eccentricity would be involved along the way..
Ah, another very British cup of tea; the grouse in the Scotch mist have now been joined by a rabbit.
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